Gallery by Karen Akers
Shady Spring – While Braden Chapman ultimately played well last week, averaging 16.6 points per game and going 3-0 against a gauntlet that featured Princeton, James Monroe and Bluefield, he routinely started slow, scoring just 12 points on 6 of 22 shooting combined in the first half of those games.
Friday was a different story.
With three of Shady’s starters tacked with two fouls each in the first quarter, Chapman took over scoring 29 points in the first half against Greenbrier East, ultimately helping the Class AAA No. 2 Tigers to an 89-63 victory over the Class AAAA No. 4 Spartans at Shady Spring High School.
The Evans Award candidate put on a show throughout the evening scoring his team’s first 11 points, compiling 19 in the first frame. They were all necessary with East trailing by just a point after a quarter and by five early in the third.
“He was on fire,” Shady Spring head coach Ronnie Olson said. “I know that Braden. It reminds me of practices when we do competitive scrimmaging where we split them even instead of the first group vs. the second. He’ll get hot and just go after it and after it and after it. I’m talking about heat check. That’s when they came up and cheated on him and then he’d go backdoor. I mean he was really in a zone there in the second quarter or first quarter-and-a-half or two. It was really fun to watch.”
Needing a rally to beat the Spartans when the teams matched up in Shady last year, the Spartans were relentless again, taking a 4-0 advantage on buckets by Adam Seams and Chris Sinclair.
Chapman put the Tigers on the board when he nailed the first of his six 3s on the evening but a pair of Goose Gabbert free throws and a Kaiden Huffman 3-point play put the visitors up 9-5. Chapman fired back with his own 3-point play and later tied the contest at 11 with his second trey.
Cameron Manns joined Chapman in the scoring column netting a pair of free throws but Chapman maintained the barrage with a pair of 3s that put the hosts up 21-17.
“Cam, Jaedan (Holstein) and Ammar (Maxwell) got in some early foul trouble so I knew I had to step up and do whatever I could to help the team,” Chapman said. “Lucky tonight the shots were just going in and I kept feeling it and my teammates kept trusting me to shoot those shots.”
The Tigers threatened to pull away in the second when Chapman followed a Sam Jordan layup with two more treys, putting his team up 30-20 with the lead ballooning to as many as 11 points at 40-29. A pair of Gabbert 3s helped swing the momentum but the Spartans still trailed 47-38 at the break.
A pair of buckets from Seams and Gabbert cut the deficit to five but an 8-0 Shady run that featured a pair of 3s from Manns restored order for the hosts who never saw their advantage fall below nine points the rest of the way.
“Tonight it was all about our rotations or lack thereof,” East head coach Jared Patton said. “As coaches, and I’m sure they do it here, but you work on that stuff all the time. We just weren’t communicating on defense and it was giving a lot of open shots and they shoot really well in this gym. They just out-played us.”
Chapman scored just four points in the second half, taking on the role of distributor. It allowed junior Ammar Maxwell to shine as he scored all 14 of his points in the third quarter, connecting on 6 of his 7 field goal attempts.
“We have a lot of sets for Ammar,” Olson said. “To play without him and have a nine-point lead at halftime – we knew we were going to get him going. They went at him early and he took a charge. We’ll have to watch that because I know teams are scouting us a little bit. We get him going down hill because they’re so focused on Braden. They’re jumping on him and Cole (Chapman) is knocking them down and we get Ammar going. What I loved about him is he was knocking them down but wasn’t forcing it. He had a couple drives and then they started backing off of him so he nails a 3. It’s great because it shows he’s orchestrating his game and shows a lot of growth.”
The Tigers were also aided by the fact they took 21 more shots than East (59-38) and out-rebounded East 28-15 with 14 of those boards coming on the offensive end.
“We had a big sign on the board that said ‘Rebound!’ as we walked in,” Patton said. “We have to be a very physical team under the basket and we’ve got to limit their second chance points and we didn’t do it tonight. They took more shots than us and Braden played great. He didn’t miss for awhile and he’s a fun kid to watch but we’ve got to clean that stuff up. We’re undersized everywhere we go and if we don’t play as big as we can this is what happens.”
Gabbert led East with 17 points while Chapman poured in 33 for the Tigers.
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
GE: 20 18 12 13 – 63
SS: 21 26 25 17 – 89
Greenbrier East
Don Penn 1, Chris Jacobs 3, Peyton Dehaven 4, Adam Seams 11, Monquelle Davis 6, Goose Gabbert 17, Hunter Humphries 2, Gabe Patton 3, Chris Sinclair 4, Kaiden Huffman 7, Jude Libby 2, Bryson Brammer 3
Shady Spring
Braden Chapman 33, Nate Richmond 2, Ammar Maxwell 14, Gavin Davis 2, Cole Chapman 10, Jack Williams 8, Jaedna Holstein 2, Jalon Bailey 2, Sam Jordan 2, Khi Olson 3, Brody Radford 3, Cam Manns 8
3-point goals – GE: 5 (Jacobs 1, Gabbert 2, Patton 1, Brammer 1) ; SS: 14 (B. Chapman 6, Maxwell 1, C Chapman 1, Williams 2, Olson 1, Radford 1)
P: 7 3/8, JM: 4 2/7, B: 2 1/7
