- By CODY ELLIOTT
RICHMOND - Throughout the season, Robert E. Lee boys basketball has stayed focused on one thing - the next game.
The Leemen have routinely put the past in their rearview and quickly refocused on their next opponent.
On Thursday night, Lee will have to do the same. The Leemen will face an Amelia County team that it defeated by 22 points in the regular season for the 2A state championship.
Lee’s head coach is quick to remind anyone who asks that the game was last year. The Leemen won the matchup 77-55 in a Christmas Tournament at Spotswood High School.
“It’s the next game,” Jarrett Hatcher said. “We’ve talked all year. It’s the biggest game on our schedule because it’s the next game. It just happens to be the last game.”
The Raiders enter Thursday night’s title game as a bit of a surprise. Amelia lost to Madison County in overtime, a team that defeated Lee in the 2A East title game, and eventually earned the No. 3 seed out of the region for the state tournament.
After holding off a pesky Richlands squad in the state quarterfinals, the Raiders got revenge on the Mountaineers with a 61-55 win in the 2A semifinals.
Now, the team hopes to do the same with a rematch against the Leemen.
“We have just worked a lot harder on defense,” Amelia head coach Kevin Rather said. “We are learning how to move our feet. That game, we did a lot of fouling. I told guys, ‘When you stop sending people to the free throw line, we are going to have a chance to win ball games.’ And that’s what we did.”
One of the biggest pieces to the turnaround will be 6-foot-2-inch Jared Baker, a forward who handles the ball and can take it inside for the Raiders.
Baker dealt with foul trouble for much of the game against Madison but came up big down the stretch, connecting on 6-of-8 free throws to help Amelia hold on for the victory.
“He’s a guy, at the end of the game — for most of the game — I would like the ball to be in his hands,” Rather said. “He’s our best decision maker. He’s our best free throw shooter. He’s our best three-point shooter. If we’re going to win or we’re going to lose, I’d rather it be in his hands.”
Both teams like to get up-tempo. The Raiders feature a number of guards who like to get out in transition and can get to the bucket with ease.
Jamal Grant and Brendan Stanford are both quick guards who like to drive while DeQuante Meadows is a lengthy 6-foot-3 forward with the ability to shoot the ball.
Lee, however, will have the advantage inside with its twin towers Jarvis Vaughan and Darius George.
George remembers Amelia particularly well, dropping a career-high 41 points in the December win.
“I was killing them inside,” he said. “They played in front of me so we just had to throw it in and take advantage. That’s all I really had to do.”
Rather said his team knows it will be a challenge to stop George but believes a couple of simple adjustments will help the team fare better.
“We are going to — honestly, it’s not much we can do differently,” Rather said. “It was just that we haven’t played a guy with that much athleticism in our conference. He’s just a guy - he gets off the floor so quick. It’s hard to jump with him. He’s getting everything off the rim. He had a lot of success doing that. We’re going to have to keep a body on him.”
Rather said December’s loss is one the team wants to forget about.
He notes that his team has “definitely grown” since the contest and the long trip to Penn Laird wasn’t easy on his players.
Hatcher also knows better than to believe it will be the same Raiders team entering Thursday night.
“What happened at Spotswood doesn’t matter,” he said. “Amelia is a better team than they were then. We’re a completely different team. They’re a completely different team. It’s going to be four quarters. Someone will be the runner-up. Someone will be a champion.”
Tip-off for the 2A boys basketball state championship game is set for 8:30 p.m. at VCU’s Siegel Center in Richmond.
