Beckley – After a month Ronnie Olson is seeing all of the new parts of his Shady Spring team come together.
Coby Dillon poured in 26 points on 11 of 16 shooting while freshman Jace Lilly and sophomore Gabe Short netted 14 points each as Shady Spring toppled Nitro Saturday in the New River CTC Invitational in Beckley.
A rematch of the previous two Class AAA semifinal matchups, this one started much like the loss Shady suffered to the Wildcats in March with the Tigers struggling out of the gate.
This time around Shady found itself trailing 13-4 before ripping a 14-2 run that brought the Tigers back to life.
“I felt like we were able to get out on them and pressure,” Olson said. “I’m not saying it was a lethargic start because we can’t have those if we want to win the region or a state championship, but we started out slow then we started getting out in the passing lanes. We’ve had the luxury of almost a week off to scout and we knew this was their third game in three nights but we knew what they were going to do and they slipped a couple times with some things we knew they wee going to do and we didn’t.
“We lost a couple guys a couple times but I knew we’d stay sound on defense. Talk about defense but offensively we got what we anted. They ran their sets great, they moved, they rolled and they filled open spots.”
Navigating a mostly new roster this season, Olson combated the size and length of the Wildcats by playing bigs Lilly and Cutter Boggs together frequently to much success.
“I told our guys, because Malachi (Flohr) and Myles (Clark) have been giving us great bench production, that different games are going to call for different lineups,” Olson said. “I thought our big lineup could give them some problems because most of the teams they play, they’re the bigger team. We feel the same way when we play our two big guys, the twin tower lineup.
“They’ve been working hard together. They actually fumbled a couple but they pass the ball well to each other. When those two are rebounding na their length on the defensive end – it’s tough and I thought those two gave them some fits on the defensive glass.”
Trailing early, the 6-foot-4 Lilly sparked Shady, netting a pair of free throws and layups to ignite a 10-0 run that saw Shady take the lead early in the second quarter on a Dillon layup.
The teams traded buckets, tying at 20 on an Eli Sexton layup, taking the lead for good on a Dillon layup. The Tiger charge continued with Dillon finding Boggs for a layup and Gabe Short and Jace Bailey connecting on a pair of shots inside the arc.
Dillon blew the top off the Shady sideline when he took a pass from Sexton and nailed a 3 in transition.
“State Player of the Year,” Olson said of Dillon. “I’m going to put my stamp on it now. Coby’s the state player of the year. I thought it when he was at Woodrow and I think it’s coming. He can put a team on his back and even there in the third quarter I got him and I said, ‘Coby, you’ve got to come back,’ because we went on a little lull. I wouldn’t even say we went on a lull at all but there were a couple times we sputtered and took some tough shots.”
Collin Crouch and Ty Stephens slashed the deficit to six at 31-25 before the intermission but the avalanche hit immediately out of the break.
Gabe Short scored on a layup and a 3, giving Shady its first double digit advantage, kicking off a quarter that saw the Tigers outscore the Wildcats 20-9.
Dillon spearheaded the charge, netting back to back buckets that put the Tigers ahead 42-29 before Lilly converted on a three-point play. Short added one more bucket to cap the 9-0 run, leading to a 47-29 advantage that ballooned to as many as 22 points in the fourth quarter.
It perfectly summarized a half in which the Tigers shot 60 percent (15 of 25) from the floor and 57 percent for the game.
“That offense looked good just going downhill and moving the ball,” Olson said. “Guys were moving without the ball and shot the ball. It wasn’t so much this tike that defense led o offense, just good, stymie half court defense to great half court offense and that was a good attribute to our guys.”
Ty Stephens led Nitro with 17 points in the loss while Crocu netted 14.
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