Following two nail-biting losses to open the season, Liberty had not played for nearly two weeks. Thursday night the Raiders came out like a caged lion that had not been fed over that period time.
Using an aggressive defense, Liberty outplayed and outworked visiting Midland Trail in a 48-30 win.
The Patriots entered the contest riding a five-game win streak, but did not answer the bell early, quickly falling behind, 8-0.
“It has been a problem all year and something that I will fix. We come out a lot of games flat. Teams get out on us six or eight nothing and then we wake up and play. For the most part after that this year, we have settled down and it has become a game,” Midland Trail head coach Curtis Miller said. “Kudos to them. They were physical with us and we didn’t respond very well. We panicked and had a lot of dribbling when we didn’t need to. Our cuts weren’t there. I just thought their physical play hurt us. We have a lot of young guys and we didn’t respond well to how the game was played.”
A bucket from Jake Ewing broke the drought for Trail at the midway point of the first quarter, but when the horn sounded, Liberty led 14-4 after the first eight minutes.
“If we can just get in shape. That is what is holding us back right now. We are not in good enough shape to maintain our level of defense for four quarters. When your legs start getting tired, your offense struggles too,” Liberty head coach Chad Williams said. “The young kids that I have do not shy away from the physicality of the game. You almost have to rein them in. If we can get them to stay mentally tough for four quarters and let them go, we will be fine. Right now, the mental side goes because of fatigue.”
While the visitors were struggling to find any semblance of offense, Liberty opened the second quarter on an 8-0 run and held a 25-10 lead at the break.
“I always write a list of things that we need to do and when we come in, we check them off,” Williams said. “The first half, we came in and checked every box. Win the 50-50 balls. Talk on defense and own the boards. We did all those things.”
The physical side of the game was not the only place where the Raiders overshadowed the visitors Thursday night.
“Not only were they more physical, they out-hustled us. I told them before the game that this was scrappy team. I told them if they are more physical and out hustled us, they would beat us,” Miller said. “I thought from start to finish, (Liberty) did both of those. We may have had about a four minute stretch where we played harder defense and got a few easy layups out of it, but I shouldn’t have to put two freshman in the game for us to do that.”
A triple from freshman Liam Daniels, who scored a game-high 24 points, gave Liberty a 38-15 lead with 2:50 to play in the third period. However, just when the game looked out of reach, Trail came storming back.
Owning the big lead, the Raiders went away from what had made them successful to that point in the game.
“My complaints when we came in after the game was the mental mistakes, defensive errors and settling for thing that the offense is not designed to do. The offense is designed to get us better shots and we were settling for the easy shots that were long range,” Williams said. “Part of it was fatigue, but sometimes it is when you get that lead, you start getting lazy on that part yourself. We have the three seniors, but they are ones that were thrown into the fire and they are still growing. I think by the middle of the season, you will see what were are all about.”
Trailing by 18 with eight minutes to play, the Patriots cut the lead to 10 on 3-pointers from Payton Bailes and Levi Skaggs, along with a stickback from Jacob Brown.
Another triple from Daniels steadied the ship for Liberty who ran off eight straight to squash any hopes of a miracle comeback.
“You see the athleticism and basketball skills are there,” Williams said about Daniels. “In middle school, he was more finesse. Now we are trying to get those moves to be more strength moves.”
One of the big keys to the defensive success for Liberty was slowing down the long range attack from the Patriots which included holding red-hot shooting Payton Bailes to just 11 points.
“What I told them was we were looking at a team where probably 60 percent of their shots are 3-point shots. They average eight or nine a game and (Bailes) is going five or six at a click, but we couldn’t leave anybody open,” Williams said. “That is why we switched so many things. We probably wouldn’t have switched as much as what we did, but when they are trying to run you off screens, the only thing we could do was switch and get up in the screens to keep them from shooting.”
For Trail, Miller sees the game as a learning lesson for his young team.
“As mad as the game makes me and I have to do better myself, sometimes games like this are good for us. It is an eye opener. You win five in a row, people start telling you that you are good and you think you just show up at a gym and it is over,” Miller said. “You have to come ready to play. That team came ready to play and I didn’t think we were. They played hard all night.”
Both teams are back in action next week in the New River CTC Tournament at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center.
MT: 4 6 10 10 – 30
L: 14 11 13 10 – 48
Midland Trail
Payton Bailes 11, Jake Ewing 4, Thad Brown 6, Levi Skaggs 7, Jacob Brown 2. Totals: 12 1-2 30.
Liberty
Jadon Acord 7, Kris Bowman 4, Riley Marty 8, Liam Daniels 24, Jaxson Workman 4, Landon Lusk 1. Totals: 18 8-12 48.
3-pointers – MT 5 (Bailes 2, Brown 2, Skaggs); L 4 (Acord, Daniels 3).
