Welcome to The Deep Post, a column/notebook recapping the week past and ahead. This week’s installation unpacks the boys state tournament.
Opening Tip
There hasn’t been a day at the state tournament like there was Saturday. All four title games were won by the No. 2 seeds and decided by exactly three points each. The Class AAA and AAAA games went to overtime, setting the tone for the historic day.
I believed the Wednesday of the 2021 tournament would always stand above any I’ve witnessed. The top two teams in Class AAA (Robert C. Byrd and Fairmont Senior) were upset that day by the seven and eight seeds for the first time in state history. To cap it off Wheeling Central beat Nitro with a 3 at the buzzer in the 4-5 game.
This year we had matchups of the top two seeds in all four classes and every title game was an instant classic.
You’d be hard pressed to find a better day in the state’s history of championship events. Every game delivered and the day produced stories that will stand the test of time. It will be circled in future state tournament programs and you’ll field questions about it if you were there.
It’s part of what makes the state tournament the peak of high school sports in West Virginia. It’s why families plan their vacations around these two weeks in March – in hopes of capturing one or two games during the week that produce a core memory. Saturday yielded four major ones with several others throughout the week (Webster County’s buzzer beater in the quarterfinals being one).
Save those ticket stubs.
Being on the losing end of those games feels awful, but everybody who coached, played and dressed in those games can say they were a part of something special. Even the crowds that lived and died with every play in the fourth quarter and overtime made Saturday what it was.
There’s been a lot of discourse about the four classes and the necessity of so many after years of just three. Saturday, March 16, 2024 will always be the day that cemented the shift as a resounding success.
Apex Predators
I’m not sure what the price of a ticket for Saturday’s state championship games was but spectators got everything they paid for and more.
The Class AAA game set the tone and it carried throughout the day, so we’ll start there, and as there was with Wyoming East’s Class AA championship victory last week, there’s a lot to unpack with Shady Spring.
When championship rematches keep occurring they start to lose their luster. Sign me up for five years of Shady Spring-Fairmont Senior title bouts. The three title games the two programs have faced off in have been decided by a total of nine points. We’ve had buzzer-beaters, double-digit deficits, legendary individual performances and overtime.
The blocks, the game-winners, the key shots and the steals will all show up in the box score. The biggest play of this installation won’t. With five seconds to play, Shady had the ball in a tied game and turned it over after tossing it up near half court. At that point the play became a fast break situation. Bodies were piled up near half court and players frantically tried to regroup.
Senior’s Darrell Claybrook then saw an opportunity for the Polar Bears to win as they did two years ago – with a Zycheus Dobbs layup. Dobbs was open and Claybrook delivered the pass.
Enter Jack Williams.
Williams closed and got just enough of the ball to deflect it out of bounds. That doesn’t register in the stat sheet but it should go down in Shady lore as the defining play of the game.
“It’s just a reaction,” Williams said. “You see Dobbs under the rim and you know they’re going to throw him the ball because if he gets it there it’s a bucket. I knew if he catches it there’s not much I can do with him down there if he gets that low. I knew I couldn’t let him catch the ball.”
One of head coach Ronnie Olson’s keys to the game was limiting Senior’s fast break and transition buckets. Those scores did the Tigers in when the two teams played at Fairmont in the regular season.
The final scramble played to Senior’s strengths and the Tigers made the play to take it away.
***
Ronnie Olson has beaten the drum of defense since he took the job in 2016. Here’s a defensive stat he can be proud of: the last two-point field goal Fairmont Senior made in the first half came at the 5:49 mark of the second quarter. Its next one didn’t come until the 5:52 mark of the fourth quarter. For those mathematically challenged, that’s a 15:57 stretch of game time where the Tigers didn’t allow a two-pointer.
That’s half of regulation.
The 18 points the Polar Bears scored over that stretch all came from the charity stripe (6) or three-point line (12). They forced the Polar Bears to largely settle for perimeter shots while they climbed out of a 10-point deficit. Olson knew that’s how they had to do it.
“I’m not gonna lie, we took a timeout and our guys, we were a little concerned,” Olson said. “But I said, ‘Guys, look at me, look at me. We are the best defensive team in the state of West Virginia.’ And we said it consistently – ‘Guys, we’re gonna get stops.’”
Olson’s belief in his program’s core principles paid dividends.
***
The matchup between Zycheus Dobbs and Ammar Maxwell was everything you’d hope for from the two best players in a championship game. Both players finished with 14 shot attempts. Dobbs made one more field goal (5) and scored one more point (15) than Maxwell did but Maxwell finished with 13 rebounds. Neither was willing to concede on the defensive end either. Shady deployed various defensive looks, mixing in some zone but always wanted Maxwell on Dobbs. Fairmont asked its star to match Maxwell as well and he did, finishing with seven blocks, most of them coming against Maxwell.
“People think we just play man-to-man and we don’t,” Olson said. “(Maxwell) did a good job of not switching off Dobbs because physically – and those guys gave him room. They chased through a lot of screens and they played off some of those guys so we could, we were gonna give them the outside shot. And they banked in a three and it was like ‘oh’ and I even told them in a huddle, ‘Guys we’re fine they’re not going to continue to go’ and they packed the paint up. Ammar bodied Dobbs up, what a heavyweight fight, and then they all went to go get it.
“We kind of played off of those guys and let them shoot and some of those guys weren’t even looking to shoot. So we were in position already to help defensive rebound and they were a great defensive rebounding position. So playing off was kind of our deal and we sat him in the paint on Dobbs and waited on him. He did hit a three but that was kind of our defensive game plan and they did a good job executing just like they did agents Nitro.”
The matchup with Dobbs has always been an important one for Shady. When the teams first met in the 2022 title game Dobbs, a sophomore at the time, diced the Tigers for 10 points in the first half of that game. His scoring wasn’t the most lethal part of his game though as the Tigers’ inability to stop his dribble penetration allowed him to collapse the defense and dish six assists. Olson put Braden Chapman on him and he scored five points the rest of the night, the final two of which came on a switch not involving Chapman.
In 2023 Olson stuck Chapman on Dobbs all game and the former held his assignment to one point in 24 minutes. The makeup of this year’s team made Olson’s decision tougher. Maxwell has struggled with foul trouble throughout the season and in the ’22 and ’23 title matchups he along with Chapman looked like the only Tigers who belonged in that game and the numbers backed that up (they scored 42 of Shady’s 59 points in 2022 and 36 of their 42 points in ’23).
From halftime of the 2022 title game to halftime of the 2024 title game, Dobbs scored seven points in eight quarters (56 minutes played) against the Tigers in their title bouts. That doesn’t include the regular season matchups.
Maxwell was as important to Shady’s cause on offense as he was on defense and he lasted nearly 35 minutes before finally fouling out. Dobbs followed him shortly afterwards. So what was the difference this time? Dobbs turned the ball over more than he had in previous matchups. He finished with five turnovers, more than he had in any other title game matchup (3 and 4) between the two teams.
“It’s always a fun matchup with Ammar,” Dobbs said. “He’s a top player in the state and I’ll give him a lot of credit. He gave me a hard morning and I hope I gave him a hard morning too, but he’s a great player and respect to their team.”
Perfectly balanced between two greats.
***
What made this Shady Spring championship so special was that every player had their fingerprints on it. As noted earlier, Chapman and Maxwell carried the bulk of the load in the last two title matchups.
This year everybody played a roll. Jack Williams was the No. 2 the Tigers needed him to be and the No. 1 when Maxwell fouled out. A year ago he couldn’t have been that player. He played six minutes in last year’s title game and looked like he didn’t belong on the court. You could tell the knee injury he suffered his freshman season in December of 2022 was still on his mind throughout last season.
He was a different player this year. An all-state player. He didn’t look bothered, he didn’t wilt. The only emotion he ever seemed to show was excitement.
When Williams had to carry the lion’s share after Maxwell fouled out, Jalon Bailey helped him shoulder it. In fact I thought Bailey was the difference maker in the game. His 10 points in the third quarter were massive and gave the Tigers another player to carry the scoring load.
It’s almost like he was made for the moment and once you put the pieces together you understand why he is. He has that Wyoming County blood.
His mother Jill played on the 1991 Baileysville team that lost in the Class AA title game. His cousin Jazz, the best shooter I’ve ever covered in the girls game, played in three state championship games at Wyoming East and just finished her career at Concord.
That Wyoming County blood runs deep.
And Saturday it was ice cold.
Bailey made all nine of his free throws including four straight in overtime. Both sets, coming with under 46 seconds to play, gave the Tigers a three-point lead. I remembered watching him his freshman year in a JV game against Logan. He yapped and jawed in what had the makings of a great rivalry. He carried that same intensity over to his first year as a varsity starter. His third quarter is the reason I don’t turn my all-tournament ballot in until the end of that frame, which is the deadline. He made the cut on mine.
Khi Olson only scored two points but they came on a steal right before halftime after Fairmont tried to bleed the clock. His bucket made it a two-point game at the break.
And I can’t forget Gavin Davis.
Davis doesn’t look like the average player in these high-level contests. He’s short, bulky, isn’t the most skilled and he’s not particularly fast or agile. But he’s smart, rebounds like he’s 6-foot-5 and plays fearlessly. My colleague Rusty Udy wrote a great story Saturday that illustrates the struggles he’s overcome. He’s avoided death and paralysis so truly, how daunting is a basketball game?
Not so much when you consider he spent the past three years getting pieced up in practice by the five different all-staters that have started for the Tigers. It was going to be difficult for him to see competition that tough again.
His late layup tied the game and he was primed for that moment.
This group wasn’t the star-studded bunch that ran through most of the state the last three years. They were mostly newcomers to the varsity level. They had different expectations and had to navigate through stretches on their own.
Williams missed multiple games with an injury, including a loss to Bluefield. Maxwell battled foul trouble for stretches during the season. They had to focus on winning the games in front of them on that particular night instead of peeking ahead to the state tournament.
There was a three-game stretch during the regular season where they were blown out at Bluefield, allowed Independence to score 70 points and led PikeView by just two points at halftime. The Tiger Cubs often had to figure it out, as did Olson. He and his staff had to coach harder than before. But this group earned their trust.
Olson coached the final 5:40 of regulation with just one timeout in his pocket. He had to trust his players were going to work through their mistakes without him saving them.
When Davis left the game in the third quarter with an injury, later returning, Shady ripped a 10-0 run. The Tigers have been in that situation.
That’s why it seemed fitting Shady was able to survive the final minute of overtime without Maxwell. They figured it out and all contributed in the program’s most meaningful victory.
***
When Andre Grant’s shot at the end of regulation left his hand, Olson wasn’t holding his breath. He jokingly admitted he was blowing as hard as he could, trying to impact the ball’s flight to the bucket. We all saw that story two years ago when Dobbs nailed a layup at the buzzer.
The Tigers were hoping they didn’t have to see it again and they didn’t. It made this title the most meaningful one.
After last year’s loss there were whispers around the Charleston Coliseum in regards to Shady’s first title run in 2021. The hard work was done for the Tigers when the No. 1 and 2 seeds were upset, leaving them as the top seed in the remaining two rounds. Eventually they matched up with Wheeling Central, a program that was in Class A before a fourth class was added four years ago. Central played up into triple-A that year, and the next. So you had a school with an enrollment of 800-plus playing against a school with an enrollment of 300 kids.
Then the next two years the Tigers faltered against Fairmont Senior in the title games and the term “Mickey Mouse Ring” was thrown around, referencing the NBA’s playoff tournament in the Disney World Covid bubble.
My belief is winning a championship is extremely difficult. The 2021 and ’22 Fairmont Senior girls came into those tournaments as heavy favorites and lost both times. Shady was the overwhelming favorite each of the last two years and lost. Fairmont Senior was the favorite this year and lost.
But if you subscribed to that narrative you can put it to bed.
Shady came in as the underdog with four new starters, weathered the storm early, and didn’t let two years of heartbreak and disappointment create doubt in the crunch. The Tigers completely flipped the narrative on their rivalry with Fairmont Senior and in the process laid to rest any doubts about their legitimacy as a championship program.
“If you do it twice, it’s not an accident,” Olson said.
The head man stopped short of saying this one meant more than the first title he won but after the sleepless nights that followed those two title games – lost by a combined six points – there’s no doubt this is the ring he’ll remember most fondly.
The folks at El Mariachi won’t let him forget it.
Beaver Blues
When Bluefield head coach Buster Large took the podium after his team’s 42-39 loss in the Class AA title game, he made it known he was unhappy with the officiating. He pointed to the Beavers’ penultimate possession where forward R.J. Harrison was stripped of the ball by Charleston Catholic forward Jayallen Turner.
At first it seemed like sour grapes. Then I went back and looked at my video of the play (you can see it here) and I believe Large was right in his criticism of the no-call. It looked like, from my angle, Turner’s hand clearly made contact with Hairston’s right arm on a reach. I went back and looked at the broadcast replay as well and couldn’t find a good review of the sequence from another angle.
Had it been called, that would’ve been Catholic’s fifth team foul, putting the Beavers in the bonus. Instead Catholic came up with the ball and cemented the game at the free throw line with under three seconds to play.
“We had a great play set up. A great play set up. Did you see what happened to R.J. when he drove to the bucket?” Large said, swiping his arm, insinuating a foul.
That said, the game wasn’t decided by one play. I’m sure there were fouls the Beavers got away with on the other end. Bluefield had 48 possessions and turned the ball over on 25 percent of them. Catholic had zero points off turnovers in the first half and 10 in the second half. Bluefield’s offense hit a wall and a lot of credit goes to the Irish because they want to win with their defense. It’s why their style has translated so well to the Coliseum over the years.
The Beavers just hit a wall at the wrong time. I thought they really missed Jase Smith, who tore his ACL in January. He gave them a third game-breaking scorer who could get his own buckets, move around and play well off Gore and Hairston when they collapsed defenses.
Still, Bluefield controlled the game in the first half, got good looks and held Catholic in check but went scoreless over the final 3:22 of the game.
In addition the Beavers lost the rebounding battle 27-20. And that wasn’t so much an effort thing as sometimes the Irish got a fortunate bounce to go their way. That’s why one-possession games come down to a coin flip.
But Catholic capitalized, scoring nine second-chance points and 10 points off of turnovers. That’s 19 out of 42 points that came from creating new possessions or extending the ones they had. The Irish continuously found ways to stay alive.
When I spoke with Catholic head coach Hunter Moles earlier this season after a win against Princeton he said the halftime message is always, “Win the third, finish the fourth.” Catholic outscored Bluefield 14-9 in the third quarter and 13-7 in the fourth.
***
For as much as Bluefield’s offense struggled Saturday, the job it did defensively was outstanding. Kam’Ron Gore was a standout for me. Most will look at his stat line on offense (nine points on 4 of 11 shooting) and scratch their heads but he held Turner in check all night. He managed just three shots at halftime and one through the games first 13 minutes.
Mind you Turner scored 30 points on 10 of 13 shooting in the semifinal the night before. Turner is an athletic freak and incredibly skilled. Gore’s performance shouldn’t get lost in the fold.
***
There’s always a sense of disappointment from the players and coaches when a team loses the title game. Bluefield’s felt worse than usual and I believe it comes from the rich history of the school and the pressure that comes with it. The football program has won 11 state championships and basketball has claimed four titles.
That doesn’t account for the runner-up finishes.
Two years ago when this group broke through to the title game before bowing out to the Isaac McKneely Poca Dots, they appeared ready to run the classification. A loss to eventual champion Chapmanville in the 2023 semis and now Catholic crushed those hopes.
It’s already hard enough to be remembered in a school where there are so many championship teams you can forget even the all-staters on those winning squads. Those who don’t win titles often fall through the cracks.
But I won’t forget.
I won’t forget R.J. Hairston respectfully addressing anybody asking him a question or the way he dapped up his primary-school aged fans. I won’t forget the physics-defying catches he made on the football field as the Beavers trudged through seasons that yielded little to no success. I won’t forget the rim-rattling dunks he threw down in the Brushwork Armory and eventually in the Charleston Coliseum. I won’t forget opposing coaches and fans going out of their way to compliment his game and how unselfish of a star he was.
I won’t forget Kam’Ron Gore’s breakout run in the 2022 state tournament after gaining his eligibility. He dissected the defenses of Wyoming East and St. Marys that postseason. I won’t forget his lobs to Hairston or his own dunks that he perfected towards the end of his senior year. I won’t forget his ability to contort his body and hit shots from any angle. I won’t forget how well he guarded Jayallen Turner in the title game.
I won’t forget Sencere Fields accepting the move to quarterback even though he had always been a skill position player. I won’t forget how he often went scoreless in basketball games but made an impact as a defensive specialist at guard and did so contently.
I won’t forget the perseverance of assistant coach Tony Webster who lost his son in 2019 but still shows up to help coach.
Their stories shouldn’t be swallowed by the school’s rich history.
Catholic’s Redemption
The stories of Charleston Catholic and Bluefield were very similar.
In 2021 Catholic was on the losing end of an entertaining final sequence in the Class AA semis. Catholic’s Aiden Satterfield and Poca’s Isaac McKneely went shot-for-shot in the final 24 seconds but McKneely got the final one, a hop-step three before the buzzer.
Last year Catholic came into the tournament as the No. 4 seed and upended No. 1 Williamstown in the Class AA semis before falling in the championship game to the same Chapmanville team that beat Bluefield the night before.
Regardless of who won, the theme of the night was redemption and Catholic earned it, doing so the way it wants. Regardless of the final sequence, the Irish defense smothered Bluefield for a whole minute. That’s an eternity in a one-point game. There wasn’t a moment where I felt like Bluefield had a good enough look to pull the trigger on a winning shot. To top it, the Beavers got just one good look in the final 3:22 of the game, an open three-pointer that rattled out.
It’s a credit to what the Irish did.
Moles, who was hired five years ago as 23-year-old, rebuilt the program on the foundation of defense and rebounding. He’s scheduled and played the toughest teams since arriving at Catholic and it was why I believed if anybody was going to beat Bluefield it was going to be Catholic. Physically and mentally the Irish were most equipped to withstand the pressure, skill and athleticism the Beavers possessed.
Stats and oddities
With thousands of people gathered in one place, you see and notice things that are usual. Here are my leftover notes from the last two weeks of basketball.
- After winning the Class A state championship Tug Valley went to cut the nets down. The scissors weren’t to the Panthers’ liking so somebody brought out a pocket knife and they started cutting from the bottom of the net. One kid ended up cutting his hand. That felt like Mingo County.
- On the girls side the team that had beaten Petersburg since the fourth class was added prior to the 2021 season had gone on to win the state championship. That trend was snapped this year when Williamstown beat the Vikings in the quarterfinals before losing to Wyoming East in the title game.
- Bluefield’s Kam’Ron Gore tied the Class AA record for steals in a game against Braxton County. He did that 10 years after former Bluefield point guard Lykel Collier set that mark at 11.
- The title matches were all rematches of regular season games lost by the championship winners. The regular season winners, all No. 1 seeds, were the home teams in those games with the exception of Bluefield which was played Catholic on a neutral court at West Virginia State.
- Shady Spring guard Jack Williams joined his sister Meg as a state champion. Meg, the 2022 State Player of the Year, led the volleyball team to a championship in 2020. His mother Kelly was the coach of that squad. Khi Olson became the first in his family to win a ring as a player. His dad, Ronnie, lost in the title game in 2000 while his sister Anyah made it as far as the semifinals twice.
I can’t forget those that made the last two weeks possible. Rusty Udy, Tina Laney, Heather Belcher, Karen Akers and Ashley Honker did terrific work capturing the games with their words and pictures. At home my wife Kegan juggled the responsibilities of two dogs, a 17-month-old toddler and a sister who gave birth three days into the girls state tournament. We had help from her family as well but she did a terrific job of managing the moving parts. We’re only as good as our support and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to work with over the last two weeks.
I also want to thank coaches like Ronnie Olson and Ryan Davidson (Wyoming East), amongst others, who have trusted me with details about their game plans, strategies and approaches to games throughout the last few years. The access they’ve allowed me is why I’m able to share the details and full context of the stories that have made this column this season.
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
