In their first game in 10 days, missing starting point guard Jack Williams, the new look Shady Spring Tigers passed their first test.
Cole Chapman followed up a two-point performance against Logan on Dec. 18 with a 21-point showing Tuesday in a 56-43 win over Class AAAA Cabell Midland in the Little General Battle for the Armory at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center.
With Williams out for the season Shady Spring coach Ronnie Olson was looking for somebody to step in and help fill the void.
Sophomore forward Ammar Maxwell was the first to answer the call, pouring in 16 points in the win.
“We’ve been on a lot of those guys,” Olson said “Who’s going to be the next guy to step up? If you’re a competitor you want that spotlight and I told him before the game it’s time for him to be the terror. It’s time for you to be an animal. You don’t practice and play your whole life to not step up when somebody goes down.
“We all love Jack but it’s what we’ve been preaching all week – who’s going to step up? Ammar did it and he was there. He rebounded like and animal and shot well. He took a charge I thought should’ve been a charge and that’s what we need to win another state championship.”
Anchored by a defense that held the Knights to 32 percent shooting from the floor, the Tigers frustrated their foes all evening.
After taking a 6-2 lead early the rest of the quarter was a miserable one form the field. The Knights were just 3 of 13 shooting from the field in the quarter, missing all seven of their attempts inside the arc.
Making matters worse for Midland was the inability to find offense aside from that of Dominic and Chandler Schmidt. The pair combined for all five of the Knights’ field goals in the first half as well as all 17 of the team’s points.
“That’s kind of been our M.O. this year,” Midland coach J.J. Martin said. “We’ve got to get some of these other guys to score. You guys saw it. It’s pretty odd we’re going into halftime and two guys have scored. We have two guys in double digits and that’s it. We’ve got to get better at running offense. Shady Spring, they do a good job at switching screens, getting up in the passing lanes and forcing you to come up high. Our guys didn’t handle pressure very well and that’s what hurt. We’ve got a few guys that can handle pressure and a few that don’t know what to do in those situations.”
The defense, along with the strong play of Chapman, helped the Tigers to a 27-17 lead at the break. It was threatened almost immediately afterwards. The efforts of the Schmidt brothers as well as Jackson Fetty helped slash the deficit to five points as the Tigers were held scoreless until the 4:14 mark of the third quarter.
The Tigers responded almost immediately with their own counter as Jaedan Holstein scored five points for Shady during a 10-2 run that put them back in charge late in the third quarter.
“Turnovers and sloppy play on offense got us,” Olson said. “But then we got to do our style of ball and get out in transition. We had a couple of turnovers and then we were able to rebound and score in transition. I’d much rather do that then score in the half court or have to set up. We’re a transition team first. I don’t care who’s on the floor, we’re never going to stop pushing it. I think that was the difference there. You can push, push, push and it’s not always going to work but eventually you’re going to wear on them.”
The Knights had one more chance to push a run across and threaten in the fourth, going to the free throw line down 10 with under four minutes to play, but missed the front end of a one-and-one. Back to back 3-pointers courtesy of Maxwell and Chapman pushed the lead to 16 and ended the threat.
Chapman’s 21 points were tied with Chandler Schmidt’s for the game-high while Shady Spring’s Jaedan Holstein scored 10 points to go along with 12 rebounds for his fourth double-double of the season. Those rebound numbers were glaring as the Tigers outworked their foes on the glass, hauling in 45 boards to Cabell Midland’s 25.
“I’m not changing everything that we do but we’ve told them we’ve got to have an identity,” Olson said. “We’re a tough-ass rebounding team and we’ve got to be able to out-rebound any team in the state. We’ve got to make it harder than any team in the state to score against us and we want to rebound. That’s who we are and they’re really starting to believe in that. We were a grind-it defensive team but also had some finesse to us. We can also be a rebounding type team and I think you can see that.”
Shady Spring advances to Wednesday’s Burger King Championship game where it awaits the winner of Woodrow Wilson-St. Joes.
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
