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Buckingham outlasts Fluvanna in boys hoops

DILLWYN — Before his first game as the coach of the Buckingham boys basketball team, Russ Gowin did his homework. With his team’s season starting a week later than most, the first year coach made sure to get a look at some of the teams he’d be seeing this season and one of those team’s was Fluvanna County, the Knights’ first opponent of the year.  And for Gowin, to start his tenure by hosting a Munro Rateau coached squad, there’s no more perfect way to start the year.

“Coach Rateau is a hall of fame coach and I told him before the game started that it was such an honor to go up against him,” Gowin said.

It’s likely that Gowin will remember his first win being a little harder to aquire than it should have been, but nonetheless, with a tremendous performace from senior Taylor Boyers, the Knights were able to give their new coach a 62-58 victory in his first game at the helm.

“I’m proud of the way we held up down the stretch,” Gowin said. “We could have folded but we finally made some free throws in the last seconds. But Kevin (Bolden) and Taylor did an excellent job on the offensive glass. That was probably the difference in the game, those rebounds and stick-backs in the second half.”

Up by six points with a minute left on the clock, Buckingham spent the last sixty seconds of the fourth quarter at the free throw line, shooting roughly 50 percent to keep Fluvanna two possessions from the lead. But with 3.1 seconds left, Yaya Anderson was able to make the game interesting by pulling Fluvanna within a posession when he hit a layup, drew a foul and hit the ensuing freethrow. However, all comeback hopes were dashed for Fluvanna when Tarian Ayers hit his second free throw to make it a two possession game once again.

Early in the first quarter, the Flucos came out running and were able to take an eight point lead and force the Knights to readjust. Guards Zach Miller and Yaya Anderson were penetrating the paint with ease and it led to a handful of quick and easy baskets.

“We dug a little hole early on,” Gowin said. “(Fluvanna) was quick tonight and I don’t know, but it looked like we were one step too slow and so they got some easy shots on us. Down 15-7, we called timeout and said we’ve got to change things up and so we started to run a two-three zone and also a one-two-two zone and that helped to limit them a bit from driving into the lane.”

Buckingham bounced back immediately with Taylor Boyers picking up some hard-fought shots down low and drawing fouls in the process. Fluvanna’s lead dimmed to just  three points after the first quarter, and by halftime the Knights found themselves up three with Boyers heading to locker room with 14 first half points to go along with 10 rebounds.

“I think we just had to get the first game jitters out of us,” Boyers said. “We came out after that timeout and played a whole lot better.”

The Flucos reaquired the lead in the third quarter, only to give it back up early in the fourth. With the Fluvanna defense staying close to Boyers, center Kevin Bolden and guards Tarian Ayers and Harry Eldridge starting to get open looks and made the most of them, putting their team up by six points with four and a half minutes which set the table for the free throw shooting contest the game became in the final minutes.

“I tried to tell our kids that this was learning experience,” Rateau said. “If we can learn what we need to from this game everything will be worth while, but if we can’t, then it wasn’t worth the trip down here. I thought that in the end of the game, we did everything we had to to try and win, but so did (Buckingham) because they made the free throws.”

Boyers finished with a game high 28 points and 18 rebounds. Bolden gave the Knights two players with double-digit rebounds, picking up 11 boards despite facing foul trouble.

“(Boyers), he’s a great player and we knew that coming in,” Rateau said. “But he absolutely killed us on the glass. He was just better than our post guys.”

In many ways, rebounding was the difference in the game, with Buckingham taking the battle of the boards by over a 2-to-1 margin.

Fluvanna (1-2) will travel to Cumberland on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. Buckingham (1-0) will host Nelson County on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

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