Charleston – Keegan Davidson heard last call and answered.
Down 51-50 with under two minutes to play the Wyoming East all-stater nailed back-to-back buckets to put the Warriors up 54-51, leading them to a 56-51 victory over Bluefield in the Class AA semifinal game Friday morning in the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.
The win sends the Warriors to the Class AA state title game for the first time since 2010 where they’ll face the winner of Wayne-Wheeling Central on Saturday at 12:30 p.m.
With the victory East claims a 3-0 season sweep of its regional rival with Friday’s matchup the closest amongst those three.
“That was a heavyweight battle man,” East head coach Kent McBride said. “That was just a heavyweight battle between two good teams that have a small margin for error and are very familiar with each other. They’re well-coached, they’re talented. The thing I’ll say about (Bluefield head coach) Tony Webster is he does a remarkable job at about January he figures out what he’s good at and they hammer on it.
“If you play them in December, you can forget it. Who he is in January and February, he’s a different – they’re a different team. Hats off to them. We have a lot of respect for them. Our players have a lot of respect for their players. We delivered some blows, we took some blows but we delivered the last one. Just one of those games. It’s what you expect when you get down here.”
Down 49-40 with under six minutes to play, the No. 3-seeded Beavers embarked on an 11-1 run to take the lead on a pair of Grayson Parris layups but an East timeout yielded a 6-0 run and a pivotal offensive foul.
Davidson was the one to tip the scales, driving right to left before hitting a fallaway jumper for the lead. East center Konnor Fox drew a charge on the next play down the court before Davidson flew to the rim for a three-point lead and final field goal of the game.
For the junior point guard, who finished with a game-high 22 points, it was his third double digit scoring performance of the season against the Beavers after netting 26 in their meeting at East and 14 at Bluefield.
“Their pressure,” Davidson said of his success against Bluefield this season. “They pressure the ball a lot and my teammates do a good job of when we get the ball to the second side I’m able to get in the paint and they’re such good shooters that they can’t help as hard. (Talan Muscari) shoots like 50 percent and Broc (Johnson) shot like 100 percent yesterday. They can’t help like most teams would like to so I’m able to get down there and shoot overtop.”
“He gets to the rim really well,” Webster said of Davidson. “He shoots the ball, he’s a heck of a ballplayer. He makes the right decision, he doesn’t turn the ball over and he’s just a basketball savvy kid. He’s a problem for anyone. I thought that we still – we knew he was going to get his but we battled them. This Bluefield team, we battled. I can say no more about how proud I am of these guys.”
The final spurt capped what was a back-and-forth contest with sporadic runs on each side.
East’s came first after Braedy Johnston netted a 3 off the bench that put the Warriors up 14-3 just five minutes into the game but a 10-4 spurt featuring a pair of 3s from Ricky Dunford made the deficit manageable at 18-15 after a frame.
A 3 from Muscari and another acrobatic layup from Davidson extended the advantage back to eight. From there the Beavers used their defense to stymie East, switching to a 1-3-1 to field a 9-0 run. It helped the Beavers take the lead at 24-23 and hold East to just one field goal – a Broc Johnson 3 – over the final 5:39 of the half.
“They went to a freaking 1-3-1,” McBride said. “Tony Webster held onto that thing until about two weeks ago. He used it against James Monroe and kind of stymied them. What makes it so good is one, they play so hard and they are so athletic on it. You think there’s these seams – form me sitting over there you think there’s all these seams but they would probably say differently.
“We knew when they subbed out Parris and went with (Eli) Riffe, that was kind of their uptempo defensive lineup. I didn’t think we did a good job getting into certain seams on it. Where we wanted to attack it, they took it away. Tony Webster. We knew it was coming but we just didn’t attack it very well there for a bit.”
Ahead 26-24 following Johnson’s 3, East used the break to devise a strategy that effectively attacked the Beavers where they were vulnerable.
“At halftime we talked about where we needed to attack that on the floor,” McBride said. “We repositioned some players to probably put a little bit of different pressure on them. We put Keegan in the corner and put (Muscari and Johnson) in the high. They were leaving open the slots we call them. If you’re going to leave open the slots these two are going to stand up there and shoot 3s. We’re going to live or die with that and then in the corner they weren’t really pressing down so (Davidson’s) getting in the lane.”
Davion Hickman knotted the game to open the half but a 10-0 run, featuring seven consecutive points from Davidson, pushed the advantage back out to 10.
Hickman snapped the skid with a layup before trading 3s with Muscari. A pair of layups from all-stater Jase Smith helped the Beavers again make a charge that saw the deficit drop to three at 41-38 when the third quarter horn rang.
Three-pointers from Muscari and Johnson early in the fourth established a 49-40 advantage but the ability to go inside to Parris – who scored six points in Bluefield’s 11-1 run – flipped the script for the Beavers.
“I just figured I had started off slow and not very good,” Parris said. “I just tried to do anything I could to get us back in the game.”
That set up the final sequence for Davidson and the Warriors with Fox’s charge against Parris giving the Warriors a three-point cushion.
“We talked with Konnor about when he’s really good and what makes him really good,” McBride said. “He made those plays before he went in the game. When we were in the fourth quarter and started making a couple shots, we had him out of the game when Braedy hit a shot – we were trying to figure out how to guard and and Konnor looked at me and said, ‘Leave him in coach. We’re playing good.’ When he comes in the game his mindsets in such a good spot that he can do those things.”
Bluefield wasn’t done, getting an open look at the tying 3 with 20 seconds left but it was off the mark.
“You definitely don’t want that to happen,” McBride said of the open look. “My thinking was, ‘Please God, miss it.’ But Jody Fuller does their offense and does a good job. You knew coming out it was going to get to Jase and we get in coverage the way we wanted to cover it but I think (Tony) could say the same thing. Late in the game when we executed he could say they didn’t cover the way they wanted to cover but that’s where as a coach you have to step back and trust that your players are going to make the right play.”
The loss brings to an end a season that saw the Beavers rebound from a three-win season a year ago and the three seed in their own region this year.
“These kids, after last year when we lost to Wyoming East I talked to them,” Webster said. “I told them we had a pretty good basketball team, we just had to put the time in. I dedicated myself because I normally coach football and have of a longtime doing both sports. I just decided no more football. I’m going to put all my heart in this basketball team and that’s what I did.”
Smith paced Bluefield with 20 points in his final game while Johnson netted 13 for Eats. Muscari added 12 on 4-of-8 shooting from beyond the arc.
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