By Phil D’Abbraccio / Special to Scrimmage Play
PENN LAIRD — For the fourth consecutive season, Western Albemarle came up short against Spotswood with a Conference 29 boys basketball championship at stake.
Despite building a 10-point lead in the third quarter, the Warriors fell to the Trailblazers 53-48 on Saturday at Spotswood in the C-29 tournament title game.
“I’m very proud of my guys,” Western Albemarle coach Darren Maynard said. “We played well enough to win tonight. We weren’t allowed to do that, but we played well enough to win tonight. I can’t really even find any fault in them, but what a heck of an effort.”
The Warriors opened the second half with a 14-2 run that sprung them ahead 32-22 with 3:40 left in the third, and they took a 38-32 lead into the fourth after a late Ryan Ingram jumper. But Spotswood senior James Sullivan hit a trio of 3-pointers in the fourth, including a tiebreaking three with 3:15 left, to help SHS to a 45-42 lead.
Western Albemarle senior guard Josh Coffman followed with a floater and Ingram made two field goals in the final minute, but Sullivan and Blazers senior Aaron Hunter combined to hit 5-of-6 free throws down the stretch to seal Spotswood’s win.
“It’s always tough taking a loss, but I thought we played really hard. We lost to a really good Spotswood team,” Ingram said. “Some of their shooters just made contested shots. I thought we played hard on defense, but they just made shots. Props to them.”
The Warriors didn’t attempt a free throw in the second half, while Spotswood went 15-for-21 at the line after halftime and 19-of-28 overall. Western Albemarle had 14 second-half field goals to the Blazers’ seven.
Western (20-5) trailed 20-18 entering halftime with Ingram’s two first-half points coming at the free-throw line. The Blazers repeatedly double-teamed Ingram as he brought the ball up the court and mixed up their timing of the double teams, a strategy the senior said the Warriors haven’t seen before. By forcing Ingram to give up the ball early in possessions, the Blazers were able to disrupt Western’s offensive rhythm, the guard said.
“People missed some easy shots that they need to make and I thought we made some adjustments at halftime and did a lot better against that in the second half,” Maynard said. “I thought we actually made them pay for doing that some in the second half, but certainly messed us up in the first half.”
Ingram, Western’s senior point guard, tallied a team-high 11 points, scoring nine of them in the second half, while senior forward Austin Cress added 10 points. Forward Jed Strickland added eight points, fellow junior Teo Rampini had seven and Coffman chipped in six points.
In the 3A West Region quarterfinals on Tuesday, Spotswood (21-4) will host Blacksburg. Western Albemarle will venture to Hidden Valley on Tuesday for a 3A West Region quarterfinal matchup. Ingram described his Warriors as a “tough team” and said they’ll “definitely” regroup to play well at Hidden Valley.
“I hope so because I don’t think we feel very good about the way things went tonight — and not necessarily what we did,” Maynard said. “I’m hoping they’ll use that as fuel to go down and keep themselves alive, and we’ll see.”
