Gallery by Heather Belcher
Historically Woodrow Wilson has owned Shady Spring in boys basketball.
That has not been the case in recent history, however.
Friday night at the Little General Battle for the Armory, the Tigers once again reigned supreme.
Sparked by 25 points each from Ammar Maxwell and Jack Williams, Shady Spring ran its win streak to five straight games with a 66-52 win over its Raleigh County neighbors.
“It’s Shady versus Woodrow and everybody is going to come out and watch Shady versus Woodrow,” Maxwell said. “It is a big game so you have to play with intensity to get the crowd hyped and get everybody hyped.”
“This is our rival now,” Williams said. “It is always a great atmosphere every game and you know you are getting everybody’s best effort.”
After being dominated by Woodrow Wilson for years, Shady Spring head coach Ronnie Olson explained the significance of the wins over the Flying Eagles.
“Looking back on the plan we had in place and what we are trying to accomplish here, it is pretty cool to sit here and think we have won five in a row against Woodrow when we were zero and 80 or 70, whatever it is before that,” Olson said.
“This game matters. It matters to us, it matters to people in the community and to people we will never meet. It is an in-county rivalry and they dominated our program for so long. We will lose games to them, but defeating Woodrow was our defining moment in regards to the rise of Shady Spring basketball. It is a healthy rivalry and it was a great game.”
The Tigers have made a living under Olson with smothering defense and by bombarding teams with 3-pointers which seem to come like tidal waves.
Friday’s game still had those core characteristics, but Shady also proved it could grind you in to submission as well.
“That is what you have to do to win a state championship,” Olson said. “It is not always going to be fire and brimstone and it wasn’t tonight. We went on spurts tonight and we have been working on being able to transition to different types of basketball.”
After an exchange of 3-pointers, the Tigers ran off 11 straight points which included a pair of stickbacks from Maxwell against the bigger Woodrow front line.
“Woodrow’s bigs are very good and coach challenged me to get boards,” Maxwell said. “I accepted the challenge and did what I had to do.”
Entering the game with the advantage down low, the Flying Eagles could never exploit their size advantage all night.
“Our bigs had a total of four points. Three times Ammar shot and missed. The ball bounced, and we didn’t put a body on him like we are supposed to,” Woodrow Wilson head coach Ron Kidd lamented. “We are not going to out-jump him, so we have to put a body on him. That is something we have to work on because we didn’t seek to understand that tonight.”
Woodrow rallied behind the play of Coby Dillon who netted 11 points in the opening half including three long balls, but still trailed by three points at the break.
Although Woodrow led briefly in the second quarter, Shady never gave the advantage back to the Flying Eagles.
Jalon Bailey rattled in a 3-ball to open the second half before his steal resulted in a basket for Williams to push the lead to eight.
A pair of triples from Dillon later in the quarter trimmed the lead back to 40-38, only to see Maxwell take control and ignite a 12-0 run.
“Just take over. I am one of the best players in the state and this is my time to take over,” Maxwell said about the key portion of the game. “That is just the leader in me. I have been waiting for my chance to show the type of leader I can be for this team.”
After converting a pair of free throws, Maxwell scored through contact and converted a traditional three-point play. Add in three straight scores in the paint and a two-point game went to a double digit lead in just over two minutes.
“That is what we have transformed into. We can do two man or we can do five man. It is just what the game dictates,” Olson said. “I knew what this game meant to him. It goes back to their rivalries in middle school. I knew Ammar was going to have a big game. “He is very hard to guard inside. He is a quick jumper and he is quick to the ball. He positions himself well and he is hard to box out. I see it everyday in practice.”
A pair of buckets from Williams and one from Bailey helped build the lead to 16 points and Shady was never threatened down the stretch.
“That is what special players do. You have a lot of guys that hold the ball and it sticks. Some of them do not buy in on the defensive end as well. The way we play on the offesnive end, it commands you pay attention to details,” Olson said. “Ammar is a great facilitator, but he also knows when we need him and he stepped the hell up tonight.”
Maxwell finished with eight rebounds, while Williams had seven. On the heels of committing just one turnover in the win over East Fairmont, Williams ended the night with zero turnovers Friday.
As a team, the Tigers committed just four turnovers in the win.
“That is all we have talked about at practice. The coaches have been beating it our heads, value the basketball, value the basketball,” Williams said. “We have been doing that in practice and then going out and executing it in the game.”
After missing most of his freshman season with a knee injury, Williams has now found his groove in his junior season.
“Last year he was kind of a shell of himself. Now he is the guy that takes the next step. He gets in the lane now and he rebounds. He creates his own shot and creates for others” Olson said. “Jack reins everybody in. He was a great calming force tonight. Jack has turned into that elite player that I thought he would be. It was just a matter of time for his body to catch up with him.”
Shady Spring and Woodrow Wilson will both be back in action next week in the New River CTC tournament.
