Shady Spring earned its first ever win against Raleigh County rival Beckley in the 2019 Little General Battle for the Armory.
Five years later, the Tigers haven’t relinquished the upper hand.
Shady claimed its seventh consecutive win in the series, handing the Flying Eagles a 56-52 loss in the Burger King division title game at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center Saturday evening.
Five years ago when the streak started it was Shady Spring all-stater Tommy Williams terrorizing the Flying Eagles with 34 points. Saturday it was his youngest sibling Jack providing the nightmare fuel.
Williams connected on 8 of 14 shot attempts including four 3-pointers for a game-high 20 points in the victory, building the Tigers up and guiding them home. Alongside fellow senior and back court mate Jalon Bailey, the two combined for 21 of Shady’s 23 first-half points, guiding their team through the early rigors.
“You hear all those coaches say it’s so nice to have a veteran quarterback behind center and I always use football analogies because I’m a big football fan,” Shady head coach Ronnie Olson said. “To have guys like that leading your offense, and when you know they’re gonna make the right plays and you know they’re gonna run and they’re gonna help guys get in the right positions, it takes a lot off of me. Honestly, they’re gonna listen to them more than they do to me. 
When I see Jalon with the ball or Jack with the ball or Khi (Olson) with the ball, I’m good because they did it at the biggest stage and they’ve been there numerous times. They’re not gonna lose games. We’re gonna lose a couple games this year, but I know at the end of the game, they’re gonna make the right decisions and they’re gonna usually be on a good end of it.”
Beckley had its own horse that gave Shady fits in Jaylon Walton who finished with 18 points and 14 rebounds. The only problem was the Flying Eagles self-tranquilized him. Of his 18 points, 14 came in the first half.
“They showed their poise and that’s from being in the state tournament,” Beckley head coach Ron Kidd said. “They kind of showed us, the stuff we have to work on. We just can’t rely on shooting jump shots. 
We got a horse (Walton) down there. We gotta look at that horse and we gotta throw it up to him. They didn’t have nobody could jump with him. Throw it up, then and go get it. 
If you throw it away, so what, we’ll take the blame for that. They rode their horse (Williams). We didn’t ride ours in the second half.”
Walton and Williams were largely the stories of the first half. The latter nailed a trio of 3s in the first quarter, keeping the Tiger offense afloat while Walton helped the Flying Eagles establish a 15-6 rebounding advantage in the first half.
The Beckley senior helped his squad draw first blood with a layup off an offensive rebound before Bailey struck for Shady. Walton made his presence felt again with another put back before Williams pulled up on the next possession for his first trey of the evening. Bailey added another layup after a deep pass from Williams and the latter again pulled the trigger from deep to establish a 10-4 Shady lead.
A pair of layups from Walton and another from Zyon Hawthorne knotted the game before Williams added his third trey for a 13-10 Shady lead after one. Walton, Hawthorne, A.J. Thomas and Preston Clary strung together a solid quarter for the Flying Eagles before the intermission, giving the hosts a 26-23 advantage on the heels of a 16-point quarter.
The Tigers topped it with a better frame.
Needing contributions outside of Bailey and Williams, the reinforcements arrived for Shady in the third. The Tigers shot 8 of 14 from the field out of the break, getting seven points from Braedy Johnston in the frame as well as key 3s from Khi Olson and Eli Sexton.
It set the tone for a half that saw the Tigers blister the nets, making 56 percent (13 of 23) of their shot attempts.
Beckley by comparison made 10 of 24 in the second half but couldn’t replicate its rebounding advantage in the final 16 minutes with Shady’s efficiency, finishing tied with 11 second-half rebounds each.
The efficiency helped the Tigers retake the lead for good and stay ahead despite attempting 11 fewer shots than the Flying Eagles.
“I told them at the end the game this was their first signature win for this team,” Olson said. “I felt like Woodrow, no matter what, they’re arguably one of the top teams in the state in quad-A and I think they’re gonna show it. We’re still rusty, they’re still rusty, but we told them a halftime you’re a new team. What Shady team are you gonna be? 
Are you gonna be the one that doesn’t win the big games? And they got their first signature win tonight. At halftime I got a little irritated little and I said, ‘Guys, you’re giving me effort on defense, but you gotta give me the effort on the offensive end too.’ You don’t hear me say that a lot. But I had two messages – keep them off the glass and push the break. Run offense with a purpose. That’s what we did.
“I thought we played good enough defense in the first half, but like I told them, you may not believe I said this, but defense can only take you so far. It’s not gonna win the state championship alone. 
We run our sets last year, and one after another, after another, after another. We haven’t worked on them a ton, but we’ve worked it enough to look better than in the first half. I think they really locked in but I think I made it a message cause (assistant coach) Shawn (Radford), he did a he did a heck of a job. I wanna give him a shot out. He put it in there at halftime, making some adjustments, and I backed him up. We’ve gotta have the same intensity on offense as we do on defense, and I thought we did that.”
Bailey finished with 15 points for Shady while Hawthorne added 12 for Beckley.
