Leesville Road boys basketball
Leesville Road's Shyheid Petteway (31) drives toward the basket as Jake Lenox gives chase during Thursday's 39-38 win over Wakefield. Petteway scored seven points in the victory.
'Underdog' Pride hand Wolverines first league loss
Although his Leesville Road boys basketball team's eight-point halftime lead over Wakefield Thursday might have been impressive — as well as unexpected — head coach Roderic Brewington knew the contest's conclusion was long from over.
With the sound of Wakefield head coach Pat Kennedy's voice reverberating from a nearby locker room, Brewington implored his troop with two simple goals: maintain their intensity and win the third quarter.
"I told our guys 'I have been watching sports my whole life, you're the underdogs. I've seen it hundreds of times, the underdogs come out flat in the second half and then they lose it,'" instructed the coach. "'You have to meet their intensity.'"
Part two of his instructions were focused strictly on the game's next eight minutes.
"I wanted us to win the quarter, not just be leading, but outscore them," Brewington recalled. "And, of course, what happens? We're outscored by eight points, and it's 31-31 going into the fourth quarter."
Click on video to see highlights from the Leesville Road/Wakefield boys basketball game.
While it wasn't an ideal scenario, the Pride thwarted the Wolverines' comeback attempt, including a late desperation heave, pulling out a 39-38 victory.
So just how did the Pride, losers of its last six games, knock of the Wakefield, which was 9-1 entering Thursday?
By controlling the pace of the game, and grinding it out one possession at a time.
Brewington choose the style after scouting a handful of Wakefield's previous games.
"Wakefield is a very, very, very good team. I have a lot of respect for them," the coach said. "I watched them play Clayton and Sanderson, and I thought, 'What are we going to do with them?'"
"Well, we wanted to control the tempo. We felt like we couldn't run with them. We wanted to so the game down. If you noticed, we were really patience. We kept the ball up high, and looked for lay-ups and open jumpers. We were just fortunate enough to hang on."
The Pride jumped out early thanks to a 12-3 run to close out the first quarter. The surge was powered by Gerroid Doughty and Shyheid Petteway, who scored five points apiece. Doughty — a former Wakefield student — led the Pride with 13 points.
"We came out ready to play. We wanted to play as hard as we call," the senior said. "They are one of the toughest teams in the conference, but we were able to pull out the win by playing hard.
"For me, it means a lot to beat them because I came from there."
The Pride continued to maintain a steady pace on offense in the second quarter, pushing its lead to eight heading into intermission.
Leesville used forward Dillion Smith as one of its primary ballhandlers, which Brewington thought kept the Wolverines' off-balance.
"He had Keith Armstrong — a very good player —on him most of the night, and we felt that getting Armstrong 35 feet away from the bucket that would help neutralize him a little bit," the Leesville Road coach said. "We wanted to pull their bigs out, and we were able to get a couple of back-door lay-ups. Of course, we also missed about every open jumper — which didn't help."
Just as Brewington predicted, the Wolverines came out firing in the second half, and quickly erased their eight-point deficit, scoring the contest's first four buckets. Dominique McDonald's lay-in with 4:41 in the quarter tied the game at 24-24. The junior guard finished with a team-high 10 points.
Chandler Hawkins (11) tries to get off a shot as Wakefield's Nigel King (20) and Abe Maingi (22) close on Thursday night.
The teams traded the lead over the next few minutes, but the Pride were able to seize momentum thanks to a last-second lay-up from Doughty.
With 4.4 seconds left in the period, trailing Wakefield 31-29, Grayson Hawkins throw a three-quarters court pass to Doughty, who then dished the ball to a nearby teammate.
After a missed shot, Doughty tipped in a putback as the buzzer sounded.
"That was definitely big for momentum," Brewington explained."
Leesville maintained a slight advantage through most of the fourth, but with under a minute remaining, led by just one point, 37-36.
After a Wakefield foul, Smith calmly converted his two shots, putting Leesville up three, 39-36. Wakefield's Maurice Nash dropped in a quick two-point bucket the Wolverines' never got off another shot.
And their desperation heave with 1.8 seconds left ended unsuccessfully.
"We tried that Kentucky/Duke play, but it didn't work," Kennedy said later. "At that point though, we were just hoping for a miracle."
The Wakefield coach later explained his squad lacked the intensity the Pride showed, and pointed out the Wolverines' terrible shooting. In all, Wakefield shooters went 0 for 11 from the three-point line.
Petteway finished with seven points, Smith added six, and James Lodge had five.
For Wakefield, Armstrong scored nine points, and Nash tallied five.
After the game, while prepping the Pride's uniforms for the laundry, Brewington lauded his squad's resiliency.
"To be up the whole game, then watch them come back, it showed a lot of heart for us to take it back," he said. "I keep telling these guys that they can win. If you can beat a Wakefield, you can beat anybody."
The Pride return to action in the Lee County Christmas tournament Dec. 28-30.
Wakefield plays Greensboro Day Tuesday, Dec. 22, and Lexington, Wednesday, Dec. 23. Both contests are held at Northern Guilford High, and begin at 4 and 3 p.m., respectively.
