Fairlea – Once Greenbrier East’s Nate Dixon got hot he never cooled off.
Dixon scored 13 of his 20 points in the second half, including eight in the final frame, as East rallied from a 10-point deficit to secure a 61-57 over No. 4 Shady Spring Friday in Fairlea.
Dixon’s performance was symbolic of the night for East which trudged through the first half before outscoring the Tigers 20-12 in the final frame to pull off the dramatic victory.
“What changed is the ball movement,” East head coach Jared Patton said. “I didn’t think our ball movement was good at all in the first half and that’s what we were stressing in all our timeouts – ‘Hey move the ball, it’ll create some open shots for us.’ I felt as though we were forcing some things in the first half and second half they finally settled in. We got a little bit better ball movement and that always leads to good looks and I thought (Dixon) had some really good ball movement in the second half.”
The win was a pivotal one for East which is still alive for home-court advantage in a region that features three of the top 10 triple-AAA teams in the state. The same still applies to the Tigers who have just one regional loss following Friday’s matchup.
“I don’t stress to the players that one game’s more important than the others, they know,” Patton said. “They know the this game tonight was important, the coaches knew and you’ve got to hold home floor advantage. It doesn’t matter who you’re playing, you’ve got to protect this place because Shady’s a tough place to play. It has been, we haven’t had much success over there over the years. Hopefully it’ll change but yeah, we dropped one to Princeton – and Princeton’s got some regional wins and we knew we had to get this one tonight.”
The ball frequently moved in East’s direction most of the night. The Spartans held advantages in rebounding 27-20 and turnovers 10-5, but the underlying note in the rebounding total was that 14 of East’s came on the offensive end, leading to 24 extra opportunities when coupled with the turnovers.
“There were a lot of things that were the difference in the game but I thought they out-willed us on the rebounding,” Shady Spring head coach Ronnie Olson said. “There was a lot of times on the offensive glass they came shooting in from the 3-point line. That was all about will and want and we’d play good defense, get a stop and give up an offensive rebound. Part of it’s on me.
“I’ve got to be tougher on the guys in practice and have them be aware. We’re a young team but they killed us on the glass. Fourteen offensive rebounds, that’s not going to win you any games. I think we’re pretty good defensive team but you might as well not play any defense and hope they miss a 3 and everybody be in rebounding position if that’s the case.”
Only four Tigers scored on the night for Shady with Gabe Short (19), Eli Sexton (12) and Coby Dillon (24) all reaching double figures.
Short kicked things off for the Tigers, netting a pair of 3s with a pair of Sexton free throws sandwiched in between for an 8-2 advantage. Down 9-5, East took its first lead when Eloi Castillo scored on a layup and a 3. A layup from Sexton reestablished control for Shady though East’s Darius Burns and Dixon reclaimed it once each in the second quarter.
Down 19-17, Shady embarked on a 14-2 run, powered by seven points from Dillon and resulting in a 31-21 lead. But five quick points from Burns and Brody Hamric made it a 31-26 game at the break.
Five times the Spartans moved within a possession in the third quarter but never reclaimed the lead in the frame.
“No quit attitude,” Patton said. “We could’ve easily yelled at the kids over here and degraded them but that’s not our coaching style. We’re always positive. We could see it in their eyes that they weren’t done yet, they had some fight left in them so we focused on the things we needed to focus on. We changed up our defense a little bit, we changed up our offense a little but and to worked out for us. We finally started hitting some shots. I think we missed 13 layups in the first half and shot 8-for-19 at the foul line.”
The two teams played the cat and moue game early into the final frame with Dixon canning a 3 to open a frame before a shot from the wing by Hamric later knotted the contest at 50. Burns gave East its first lead since the opening frame with another layup before Short knotted the game once more but a 3 from Burns tipped the scales for good.
Forced to foul late in the game, one final sequence proved emblematic fro Shady. A missed free throw by East was corralled on the offensive glass by the Spartans – who held a 60-57 lead at the time – forcing Shady to foul again and allowing East to push its lead to multiple possessions.
Shady had two different looks at a 3 on its final possession, aiming to get the deficit back to a point, but neither fell ahead of the buzzer.
“I didn’t think our defense disrupted them a lot,” Olson said. “I thought Hamric got comfortable a lot. He got in the paint and I don’t think we were aware of where he was at. He just – he did that to us last year. He’s a good player. He shot over us. We didn’t really do a. good job of making it hard on him getting inside. He just walked his way in and you can’t let anybody do that, especially a guy of his caliber.”
Dixon led East with 20 points while Hamric netted 17. Burns rounded out the double-figure scorers with 11 points.
Shady Spring
Gabe Short 19, Eli Sext0n 12, Coby Dillon 24, Cutter Boggs 2
Greenbrier East
Brody Hamric 17, Davis Burns 11, Nathan Dixon 20, Sam Hawver 2, Cai Jones 3, Braylen Godfrey 3, Eloi Castillo 5
SS: 15 16 14 12
GE: 12 14 15 20
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