Madison County’s boys basketball team had a game plan for George Mason. The Mountaineers wanted to make the Mustangs work, they wanted to use some clock and they wanted to make Mason pay for employing a 1-3-1 zone.
It worked perfectly to build a six-point lead heading into the fourth quarter and with a series of late defensive stands, the Mountaineers held on for a 43-39 victory in the Conference 35 title game.
“We executed our game plan really well today,” said Madison County point guard Isiah Smith. “I just had to make sure to control of the game and execute.”
That efficiency and Madison using long possessions on offense led to one of the quickest high school games in recent memory, completed in 71 minutes from tipoff to final buzzer.
“We felt like they wanted us to shoot it quickly so we wanted to make sure we didn’t take the first shot we saw, that we were able to take 30 or 40 seconds off before we got into an actual set,” said Madison coach Ben Breeeden. “I felt like we did a really good job.”
Smith played a critical role down the stretch, rebounding his own miss of a key free throw with an acrobatic move near the sideline where he slung the ball back into play with just seconds to play. Elijah Lewis recovered the loose ball and Madison called a timeout while he was laying on the ground holding on to the ball.
“I knew my shot was off, so I just tried to hustle and get the ball back for my team and just do anything I can to win the the game,” Smith said. “I knew I was pretty close to the sideline so I just tried to get it out of my hand as fast as I could.”
The play helped Madison ice the game and pull off the win, with Gaines Swink hitting two free throws out of the timeout before a coast-to-coast attempt by Mason missed right. Swink rebounded and time expired. Madison had to play a lot of defense down the stretch to pull off the win.
“We didn’t make a bucket for so long and I told the guys we wanted to take lay-ups and not shoot jumpers,” Breeden said. “I thought we took two of them really quickly in a possession that we didn’t need to take, we didn’t have much rhythm offensively in the fourth quarter.”
Some of that was Mason too, a program that has been in a lot of big games over the years and took the fight to the Mountaineers in the closing quarter.
“You have to give Mason credit, they’re always a tough team, they always play hard and they tend to hit the big shot,” Breeden said.
Madison’s defense allowed the Mountaineers to avoid having Mason hit the bigger shots and get over the hump, allowing the Mountaineers to close out the game.
Lewis finished with with 11 points to lead the Mountaineers while Kobi Alexander had eight, Smith had seven and Dre Twyman had six.
Madison County advances to the Region 2A East tournament where they’ll face Page County Friday.
