Gallery by Heather Belcher
Charleston – The Shady Spring boys basketball team walked quietly through the back door of the Charleston Coliseum Thursday afternoon but unlike the Greeks, the Tigers didn’t hide their intentions against the Trojans.
No. 1 Shady Spring hammered No. 8 Hampshire with a relentless barrage on defense, forcing 28 turnovers and scoring 38 points off said turnovers en route to a 82-41 throttling of the Trojans in the Class AAA quarterfinals Thursday night at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.
With the win Shady advances to Friday’s Class AAA semifinals where it will face the winner of Scott-Herbert Hoover at 5:30.
Two years ago when the Tigers won the Class AAA title, they did so as the No. 3 seed. That was in part because Hampshire, the No. 8 seed that year, became the first team in state history to upend a No. 1 seed.
Avoiding that same fate was a point of emphasis for Ronnie Olson’s Shady squad.
“You never forget every minute we were in this building the year we won the state championship,” Olson said. “We know who got beat and anybody would be lying if they said they didn’t want the high seeds to get beat. That’s just the nature of basketball. You can talk to any team in the bracket in the bracket busting. We were very cognizant of that. The only one in history (to beat a No. 1) and that’s pretty cool. As much as they talked about that, we talked about that too. We just said, ‘Let’s play like we’re better. We’re champions.’ These guys have all won state championships so we can all say we’re state champions so let’s come out and play like it and we took care of business early.”
It took the Tigers nearly two minutes to find their offense but once they did the game got out of hand quickly.
Trailing 2-0, Cameron Manns put Shady on the board with a jumper and Braden Chapman followed with five straight. A jumper from Cole Chapman and a 3 from Manns staked the Tigers to a 12-4 advantage.
Out of a timeout the Tigers lost no steam, forcing the fifth and sixth Hampshire turnovers of the night less than five minutes into the game, pushing the advantage to 10. It never fell below double digits the rest of the way but that didn’t stop the Tigers from attacking.
They made 10 steals and forced 17 turnovers by the time the halftime buzzer rang, holding a 49-19 advantage.
“We’ve seen a bunch of pressures this year but that press, it was something I’ve never seen before,” Hampshire’s Jenson Fields said. “They just ran and jumped. You turn your head and they’re there. Boom. In the regular season we played a lot of good teams but that team right there was just a team we’ve never seen like that.”
Ammar Maxwell led the scoring charge with 22 points on 10 of 14 shooting for Shady. He was joined in double figures by Braden Chapman (15), Cole Chapman (11) and Cam Manns (13). All four players also had three steals each on a night Shady forced 28 turnovers.
That mark fell just short of the record North Marion set last year against against Shady in the quarterfinals when it turned the ball over 29 times but follows a trend of the team excelling in Charleston, with this junior and senior class boasting a 6-1 record in the state tournament, having outscored opponents 489-334.
“We’re just dogs at the end of the day,” Manns said. “We’re playing like that and we’ve got to keep it going.”
“I think they enjoy the stage,” Olson added. “I think they enjoy the stage, the bigger stage. You can look at our schedule and it’s not anything about being conceited or being cocky. We played great teams. I was looking at some of there teams in Florida five-A to eight-A schools that finished top-four in the state of Florida. Obviously Morgantown we took to the wire, Parkersburg South we played the best teams in West Virginia and all the way down the Florida. They’re battle tested in big game.”
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
