Kareem Martin was so confident in the young sophomore, he didn’t feel the need to draw up a fancy play. With the game tied and just 20 seconds left, he let Jhalil Mosley go to work.
“What you do in that situation as a coach is you want to call a timeout and draw something up,” Martin said. “You know what, I’m looking at Jhalil, he’s hot and I (decided) I’m going to let him do his thing. I said ‘You do you and I know you’re going to finish it.’ I didn’t call a timeout, I trusted that he would make it happen and he did.”
On Monticello’s two previous possessions, Mosley attacked the basket, hitting a layup and then converting a 3-point play. The last offensive possession for Monticello was no different. The Mustangs sophomore got in the lane, took a shot underneath the basket with a defender in his face, and watched the ball pass through the net with just over one second remaining on the clock. Western Albemarle put up a last ditch effort, but the hail mary missed the hoop and Monticello collected the 57-55 win.
“I was taking what they were giving me,” Mosley said. “I saw they were letting me get in the lane. I tried to (take advantage) of that and help my team get a victory.”
Mosley’s grand finish was a sigh of relief for Martin.
“I hate playing the Maynards,” said Martin, who’s team dispatched Mike Maynard’s William Monroe team in the quarter finals, and then topped Darren Maynard’s Warriors squad. “Their kids are going to come and play hard regardless of what you want to play.”
Monticello was sitting pretty earlier in the fourth quarter with an 11-point lead after three quarters of battling Western in what, for the most part, a two possession game.
The Warriors stormed back behind the play of Ben Turner, who struggled early, but established a presence inside in the fourth quarter. With the deficit down to four points midway through the fourth, Western managed to take the lead with 1:25 to play on a 3-pointer from Jake Nidiffer. From that point forward it was one Turner basket followed by response from Mosley, repeated over and over again. While Mosley was sliding through defenders, Turner was collecting offensive rebounds and turning them into points.
“Our biggest problem tonight was the rebounding,” Martin said. “We gave way too many doggone boards. We take care of the rebounding and we’re not fighting like we did tonight. You can’t give teams two and three chances to score.”
While it was Turner late in the game that got the job done, Austin Ellis carried Western in the first half, mostly at the free throw line. And once Nidiffer and Will Donnelly found their stroke in the fourth quarter, all of the sudden the Warriors clawed their way back into the game.
“I am really proud of our kids for fighting and coming back,” Maynard said. “We’ve been playing like this all the last month or so of the season, we didn’t get a lot of (wins) to show for it, we got a lot of overtime losses and buzzer beating losses like this one.”
It was a battle for most of the night with Monticello taking a 5-point lead into the second quarter, but the Warriors keeping it a 2-point game going into the third before the wild finish.
The Mustangs accumulated their lead in the third when Mosley’s scoring was complimented by fellow sophomore guard Denzel Terry, junior sniper Kevin Archer and Sam Shannon.
Mosley led all scorers with 21 points while Terry finished with 14. Both Archer and Shannon had eight points each.
Turner had a team high 18 points for Western while Nidiffer, Donnelly and Ellis each finished with eight points. After advancing to the Group AA quarterfinals last year with a senior laden group, Maynard’s team went through a rebuilding year. While Nidiffer leaves the team next year, the Western coach is excited about the lessons this team has learned from front to finish.
“We played a lot of young guys and for us to go through this kind of experience, it’s got to mean a lot to us next year,” Maynard said. “We’re super, super young. I’ve never been this young ever. That’s a good thing for the future … I’ll miss (Jake) a lot. The thing about him is he gives you every ounce of effort he’s got every second he’s on the floor. That’ll be hard to replace.”
With the win the Monticello boys and girls are both in the JD championship game, the first time ever that’s happened in the same year. With Martin only having the luxury of one senior, the opportunity to play Charlottesville for the title is almost overwhelming.
‘It’s a wonder that I’m not crying,” Martin said. “I’m emotional about this. I love these kids, big time. Big time. I appreciate them and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
