There really wasn’t any more adversity that Buckingham County could have faced, and even more so late in the fourth quarter. With the death of senior Dyzhawn Perkins, an All-Group 2A football player, over the weekend looming heavy on the minds of players, parents, students and faculty, the deck was further stacked with the Knights missing one of their leading scorers Tariq Gough. And just for good measure, old man winter kicked in and kept Buckingham from being able to practice until Wednesday.
All of that made Thursday’s loss that much tougher for a senior-laden class where football and basketball are simply a part of life. But through it all, the Knights played with dignity, strength and gave their home crowd a show, a break from the outside drama from the past weekend.
“It’s over (the season) and it’s just hard to believe,” said Buckingham senior Leon Ragland. “We came in and Coach (Russ) Gowin always keeps telling us to keep our heads high. As teammates, we talk about keeping our heads high. We came in just trying to do that, keep our heads high.”
So much easier said than done. That the Knights came just one last second free throw away from forcing overtime with Appomattox, it’d be easy to say that the Raiders 55-54 win in the Conference 37 semifinals was the most cruel way for a team to end its season when it was already riddled with outside factors that should not be effecting a good group of high school athletes. Truth be told though, it should not have been such a close game. Buckingham mustered up the courage to make it a classic, even if the ending wasn’t happy.
“It’s hard to even describe,” said Buckingham coach Russ Gowin. “We could have quit and lost by nine or 10 but the kids — I’m just so proud of them — they made some amazing plays and played so hard. They made this a wild finish.”
What should be remembered in the lore of Buckingham basketball history is that the Knights were down by seven with just under a minute to play. By all counts, Appomattox was in full control. But with two turnovers paired with a 2-for-8 effort at the free throw line, the door was left just open by a sliver, and the Knights made the most of it.
When B.J. Gough knocked down a 3-pointer with 31 seconds left, the lead was down to four. With the Raiders missing both free throws on the other end, Ragland hit his fifth 3-pointer of the night with 22 seconds to go to make it a 1-point game. After Appomattox went up by two converting half of the next set of free throws, the game looked over after Gough’s go-ahead try from outside just narrowly missed. But with another 1-for-2 try at the line with 5.6 seconds left for the visitors, the Knights collected the rebound and Jervonte Morgan threw up a prayer as he was fouled with 0.8 seconds to go.
He got three shots and buried the first two before Appomattox tried to ice him on the third. That third shot was off by an ever so slight margin to the right and kicked straight up into the air. It was the end of what would have been an uncanny comeback, and thus, Buckingham’s season. And as Morgan began to hang his head against the wall of the gym, he was immediately mobbed by his teammates who embraced him, picked him up and went into the handshake line and locker room all with their heads high. If there were tears, they were behind closed doors.
“We’ve had so much to go through and it’s hard to ask anything more of the kids,” Gowin said. “The crowd was great especially at the end there and it was just a great finish, everyone got every penny out of this one.”
Given all the outside influence in the game, the first five minutes looked as though the Knights were in for a tough go of it. With the Raiders rolling out to an 8-0 lead and the Knights offense struggling at the free throw line, in the final two minutes of play Gough and Ragland got hot offensively and suddenly tied the game at 8-8. And the Knights, with Ragland hammering 3-pointers, suddenly found themselves up 20-13 in the second.
“It was a good feeling because of the off days, just the one practice,” Ragland said. “It was a slow start but we got it going there.”
Appomattox responded defensively though and got the gap to five points at the break. The Raider built their first quarter lead on offensive rebounds and got back into things in the second doing the same thing. That paired with some offensive miscues gave Appomattox some late second quarter momentum that would rear its head in the third.
“If we had eliminated the mistakes in the first half, I think it might have gone differently,” Gowin said. “But that’s way the game goes.”
Buckingham took a 26-17 lead, but the Raiders, with their offensive rebounding and outside shooting coming up big, soon closed the margin to 30-27. Going into the fourth, it was a 1-point Knights lead.
“We made some adjustments defensively that they weren’t used to with us, going with a couple of zones and I think that made a big difference,” said Raiders coach Travis Cottrell. “We’ve been a man-to-man team primarily since I’ve been here the last five years. The zone gave us a nice adjustment.”
From there, Appomattox took the lead out the gate in the fourth and quickly built a 2-possesion lead as it’s 3-point shooting got hot while Buckingham’s finally went cold.
“We finally started screening for each other which was a novel idea,” Cotrell said. “We had the size matchup and once things got to team basketball, things looked a lot better in that second half.”
So there it sat at 53-47 with just 57 seconds to go before the Knights decided to make things interesting.
For the Raiders, Matt Page led the way with 22 points and three second half three’s. Marquise Morgan, who was a force inside, had 12 points and 14 rebounds.
In his final game in a Knights uniform, Ragland finished with 21 points, eight rebounds, two steals and a block. He went 5-for-9 from beyond the arc. Fellow senior Michael Mabry, who had to bare the load the inside, had a huge game on defense with 10 rebounds and two blocks as senior forward Michael Allen missed the bulk of the second and third quarters with foul trouble. Gough, also a senior, logged 17 points and four steals.
“The guys that have been here three and four years, they’ve all hung in there playing football and basketball other sports, all the open gyms, the summer camps,” Gowin said. “That kind of work, for them to stay at it the whole time in all the sports, I really just could not be more proud of them.”
