Photos by Tina Laney
Shady Spring – Revenge is a dish best served cold and Saturday’s spread was too frigid for even a polar bear to stomach.
In a rematch of last year’s Class AAA state championship game, one that was won on a Zycheus Dobbs floater at the buzzer, Class AAA No. 2 Shady Spring avenged that agonizing defeat with an 85-65 victory over No. 1 Fairmont Senior at Shady Spring.
Ammar Maxwell, who scored 16 points in that title game loss, exploded for a season-high 32 points Saturday with 17 of those points coming in the second quarter. The contributions were much welcomed after the junior had a suspension stemming from an ejection at Logan last Saturday overturned by the WVSSAC this past week.
“He’s a mismatch nightmare because you’ve got to put a guy big enough to guard him in the post and then you’ve got to put a guard on him to keep him in space cause he’ll go downhill and that’s just kind of what we’ve seen out of Ammar recently this year,” Shady head coach Ronnie Olson said. “That’s what I’ve been bragging on him about this year – the way that he can go downhill and shoot, he does everything. For his size, he’s still a baby. I put him on the scout team and (simulated) Dobbs and I think he got 30 on us one day. I think he showed a prequel of what was coming.”
Maxwell’s success was a microcosm of how the Tigers executed offensively on the afternoon. He shot 11 of 14 from the floor with six of those buckets coming from beyond the arc.
As a team the Tigers shot 49 percent from the field (30 of 61) for the game, hitting at a 50 percent clip or better in every quarter except the third and turned the ball over just eight times.
“The transition hurt us at times where we didn’t get back to the shooters,” Fairmont head coach David Retton said. “At times we got back late. Dribble penetration hurt us – them having the ability to get the ball to the basket. I feel that’s where they are so good. They’re really good at getting the ball to the basket and that causes help and then it causes the kick out and they did a very good job with that.”
Offense was the name of the game through a quarter with the Polar Bears leading 18-17 heading into the second. It immediately became apparent Maxwell was in for a big day afterwards.
A 3-pointer from the 6-foot-3 junior gave the Tigers the lead and he added to it later with a pair of free throws and a layup. DeSean Goode cut the deficit to three with a layup for Fairmont but another Maxwell 3 and layup eventually pushed the Tiger lead to six. His barrage continued as he added another 3 and layup before the quarter concluded, finishing with 17 of the Tigers’ 20 points in the frame, delivering them a 37-29 advantage at the intermission.
“I’m just playing as myself and doing what I need to do,” Maxwell said. “I was pretty confident coming in and when my first shot went down I just knew I could keep going.”
Maxwell, who scored 22 in the first half, added 10 in the second half with the rest of Tigers firing on all cylinders.
Braden Chapman, who scored 26 in last year’s title game, pushed the Shady advantage to 10 points before Cam Manns compounded the early run with a 3. From there the advantage never fell below double digits, ballooning to 21 points after three quarters.
“I will say this – I think bringing Coach (Shawn) Radford – he’s been able to take some of the responsibilities off myself and let him run the offense,” Olson said. “He’s like a mad scientist. In football you have coordinators and he’s done a really good job executing and letting me focus on the defensive end, discipline and Xs and O’s and game planning and I think that’s the difference.
“I watched the state championship game yesterday and it was the first time I watched it and strategized against what we were going to do the next time we were going to play them and I saw some really big deficiencies in our offense and I just think our offense now, we have so many more sets and we’re so balanced. Everybody can hurt you and it just wears on a defense and obviously the way we play on defense is going to wear you even more.”
The Polar Bears, to their credit, didn’t concede. A quick 9-2 run cut the deficit to 14 with Dobbs getting downhill, forcing turnovers and accounting for five of those points.
The Tigers refocused though as Manns nailed another 3 to kick off an 18-4 Shady run that pushed the lead to 26 and cemented the victory.
“They probably wouldn’t have as much stock in it as we do but I’m not into coach speak,” Olson said. “I’m into being honest and that was big for us. They beat us and it was a heartbreaker. Hell, it bothered me and still bothers them and I’m not going to run from that. For us to beat them the way we did, it was a statement for us and a statement from our community that’s still hurting from that. We put it to bed … We put last year to bed tonight 100 percent.
“The No. 1 seed is big for us. People don’t want to to talk about later on down the road but if you’re a top tier program, you know what? we look down the road. You control things you control and we can control our seed in the state tournament. That was big for us and we want to control that No. 1 seed and if we take care of business the rest of the way it should be ours.”
Shady (11-3) will host Class AA No. 2 Bluefield on Tuesday.
FS: 18 11 10 26 – 65
SS: 17 20 23 25 – 85
Fairmont Senior
Zycheus Dobbs 20, Andre Grant 14, Connor Gower 5, Latique Williams 1, Desean Goode 15, Julz Bulter 5, Jaleel Law 3, Nadyn Chandra 2
Shady Spring
Braden Chapman 17, Ammar Maxwell 32, Cole Chapman 7, Jack Williams 2, Jaedan Holstein 10, Sam Jordan 2, Cam Manns 15
3-point goals – FS: 6 (Dobbs 1, Grant 1, Gower 1, Goode 1, Butler 1, Law 1); SS: 11 (B. Chapman 1, Maxwell 6, Manns 4)
