Riverheads picked up its fourth win of the young season but it was by far the toughest one as a determined Luray Bulldog team would not go away and kept firing up three pointers to stay in the game, including one final 25 footer that stripped the net at the horn to make the game seem maybe a tad closer than it really was. The Gladiators held as much as a 12-point lead in the fourth quarter before the final Luray surge made it more respectable.
Once again balanced scoring was the key to the win and most of it came from the Big Red's senior leadership as two guys scored in double figures and three others narrowly missed it. Grant Painter led the way with 15 points followed by 10 from Zach Adams. Fellow seniors Elijah Dunlap and Honor Robinson were not far behind with 9 and 8 points respectively.
However it was a pair of underclassmen who came through with some of the most important contributions of the evening. Junior Adam Painter, who had missed Saturday's win over James River due to illness, played sparingly tonight but his only points of the game, a three-pointer from the left wing midway through the third quarter snapped a 37-37 tie and put the Gladiators ahead to stay.
Then sophomore reserve guard Ryan Farris came to life and knocked in eight quick points to give the Gladiators some breathing room. They led 44-37 after three quarters and never allowed the Dogs to get within single possession striking distance. Senior Deacon Moore scored the other 6 points for the Gladiators, all in the first half.
Riverheads will be seriously tested if they hope to remain unbeaten with road trips scheduled for Thursday night at Parry McCluer and Friday night at Waynesboro. Those two will be challenging because the Blues have a way of getting inside your head and making you play their game and Waynesboro is a fellow unbeaten and reportedly has some serious size, which Riverheads may have trouble matching. It will not be out of the question for the Gladiators to be 6-0 by the end of this week, but it will be a tall order.
Saving the strangest news for last...........it is not often that the JV game on any given night is worthy of the most coverage, but the one we saw tonight at Riverheads got inexcusably out of control before the Gladiators held on to win 50-46 in overtime.
Luray came out strong and controlled the entire first half. In fact a steal and breakaway layup by Michael King that made it 24-23 at the break was RHS' only first-half lead. The teams then traded buckets in the third quarter until a seven-point Gladiator spurt pushed them to their largest lead of the night at 35-28 and it appeared that they were ready to seal the deal.
But Luray's Lebron Payton hit his third or fourth long-distance trey with 9 seconds left to tie the game at 39. That is when things got really interesting......
The players got caught up in the moment and lined up for the overtime session facing in the wrong directions. Well these are kids and we can cut them some slack but the two dudes with the whistles around their necks should have known better. But nobody caught it in time and they tipped off anyway for an extra four minute session. (On the TeeVee they like to call it "free basketball.")
A Riverheads player then scored in what was supposed to be the Luray basket with just eight seconds run off the clock. Which created a major incident that took at least ten minutes to sort out.
Was the basket supposed to count for Riverheads? Or was it their bad luck and the two points were going to stay on the Bulldog side? Were we supposed to set the clock back to four minutes and start over? As the referees tried to calm the two frustrated coaches, at least half a dozen or more fans were on their feet yelling out their suggestions at full volume about how best to resolve the issue.
The final decision was made to wipe the bucket off the boards, reset the clock, and start from scratch at 4 minutes. Later in the hallway even a Luray manager was heard to say that he agreed that was the right call.
Once play resumed, the Gladiators pretty much controlled the overtime and one of the highlight reel plays was a coast-to-coast driving lay-up by the Big Red's burly Noah Williams, who temporarily decided to be a guard. That key bucket made it 46-41. Tempers then flared one more time in the final seconds when many Riverheads fans thought a Luray player should be T'd up for trying to kick his way out of a jump ball situation.
Fortunately play ended soon after that, the Gladiator Juniors raised their season record to 2-2, and the varsity game, which would turn out to be tame by comparison, started soon thereafter. Most fans probably made it home in time to see the most important parts of the UVa game and the better-than-expected effort that they put forth in the Orange Bowl. By the time some of you read this review, we will know how our "other" state team does in their bowl game against the Kentucky Wildcats.
Once again balanced scoring was the key to the win and most of it came from the Big Red's senior leadership as two guys scored in double figures and three others narrowly missed it. Grant Painter led the way with 15 points followed by 10 from Zach Adams. Fellow seniors Elijah Dunlap and Honor Robinson were not far behind with 9 and 8 points respectively.
However it was a pair of underclassmen who came through with some of the most important contributions of the evening. Junior Adam Painter, who had missed Saturday's win over James River due to illness, played sparingly tonight but his only points of the game, a three-pointer from the left wing midway through the third quarter snapped a 37-37 tie and put the Gladiators ahead to stay.
Then sophomore reserve guard Ryan Farris came to life and knocked in eight quick points to give the Gladiators some breathing room. They led 44-37 after three quarters and never allowed the Dogs to get within single possession striking distance. Senior Deacon Moore scored the other 6 points for the Gladiators, all in the first half.
Riverheads will be seriously tested if they hope to remain unbeaten with road trips scheduled for Thursday night at Parry McCluer and Friday night at Waynesboro. Those two will be challenging because the Blues have a way of getting inside your head and making you play their game and Waynesboro is a fellow unbeaten and reportedly has some serious size, which Riverheads may have trouble matching. It will not be out of the question for the Gladiators to be 6-0 by the end of this week, but it will be a tall order.
Saving the strangest news for last...........it is not often that the JV game on any given night is worthy of the most coverage, but the one we saw tonight at Riverheads got inexcusably out of control before the Gladiators held on to win 50-46 in overtime.
Luray came out strong and controlled the entire first half. In fact a steal and breakaway layup by Michael King that made it 24-23 at the break was RHS' only first-half lead. The teams then traded buckets in the third quarter until a seven-point Gladiator spurt pushed them to their largest lead of the night at 35-28 and it appeared that they were ready to seal the deal.
But Luray's Lebron Payton hit his third or fourth long-distance trey with 9 seconds left to tie the game at 39. That is when things got really interesting......
The players got caught up in the moment and lined up for the overtime session facing in the wrong directions. Well these are kids and we can cut them some slack but the two dudes with the whistles around their necks should have known better. But nobody caught it in time and they tipped off anyway for an extra four minute session. (On the TeeVee they like to call it "free basketball.")
A Riverheads player then scored in what was supposed to be the Luray basket with just eight seconds run off the clock. Which created a major incident that took at least ten minutes to sort out.
Was the basket supposed to count for Riverheads? Or was it their bad luck and the two points were going to stay on the Bulldog side? Were we supposed to set the clock back to four minutes and start over? As the referees tried to calm the two frustrated coaches, at least half a dozen or more fans were on their feet yelling out their suggestions at full volume about how best to resolve the issue.
The final decision was made to wipe the bucket off the boards, reset the clock, and start from scratch at 4 minutes. Later in the hallway even a Luray manager was heard to say that he agreed that was the right call.
Once play resumed, the Gladiators pretty much controlled the overtime and one of the highlight reel plays was a coast-to-coast driving lay-up by the Big Red's burly Noah Williams, who temporarily decided to be a guard. That key bucket made it 46-41. Tempers then flared one more time in the final seconds when many Riverheads fans thought a Luray player should be T'd up for trying to kick his way out of a jump ball situation.
Fortunately play ended soon after that, the Gladiator Juniors raised their season record to 2-2, and the varsity game, which would turn out to be tame by comparison, started soon thereafter. Most fans probably made it home in time to see the most important parts of the UVa game and the better-than-expected effort that they put forth in the Orange Bowl. By the time some of you read this review, we will know how our "other" state team does in their bowl game against the Kentucky Wildcats.
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