Friday, March 19, 2010
Pathway the region's top basketball team
Ray Cox covers recreational, high school and college sports in the New River Valley. If you have information you’d like featured,
e-mail ray.cox@roanoke.com or call 381-1672
Ray Cox
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Pulling the shades on basketball season:
The team of the year in the New River Valley this season was Pathway Christian's boys, selected by acclimation.
Led by an unheard-of four 1,000-point scorers, Pathway won every major competition it entered.
Count them up: PCA Tip Off Tournament champs, Lake Erie National Shootout Tournament champs, VACA SW District champs, VACA Regional champs, VACA State champs, NACA (National) champs.
The final trophy was earned last week at the NACA in Tennessee. One of the 1,000-point guys, junior Andrew Lucas, was tapped as tourney MVP.
Aaron Vest, another of the four big guns, won VACA regional player of the year and VACA state player of the year.
The other two 1,000-pointers are Taylor Morrill and Justin Reed.
Vest and Reed have been classmates since elementary school. By now they've "been together so long they can complete each others sentence," Pathway coach Matt Linkous wrote in an e-mail.
Other members of the rotation included Brandon Hudnall, Joel Goodhart, Taylor's little brother Zack Morrill, and Logan Cordes, who transferred in this year.
One other point about these champions: They also know how to behave as gentlemen. At the tournament in Tennessee last week, they won the sportsmanship award.
For Linkous, who came over to Pathway last year from a similar post at Gateway Christian, the title was particularly rewarding.
Interestingly, Linkous played for Gateway when that school won the state tournament and was the NACA runner-up in 1992.
Pathway finished 36-3 this year, the best record Linkous has had in 15 years of coaching.
Before the championship final last week, Linkous instructed the guys to enjoy the moment and remember that the relationships and memories were worth more than any championship.
Now they have both.
Leftovers from the Virginia High School League tournaments in Richmond last week:
n Best game was I.C. Norcom's upset of previously undefeated Petersburg in the Group AAA final. By late in the game, Norcom had its two top players on the bench, disqualified by fouls, and only one apparent scoring option. Yet they were still in it, down one, in the closing seconds.
On the last possession, a guy who hadn't handled the ball much at all previously dribbled furiously down the left side and put up a shot that was a bit too firm from close. However, the trailer was right where he was supposed to be for the carom and putback at the horn.
It was the only two points the young man scored all night.
n Billy Hicks, coach of three-time state champion Cave Spring, has admirable skills as a coach. He's also lucky. Many coaches never have that once-in-a-lifetime player. Hicks has had two: J.J. Redick and Josh Henderson.
n The last-second loss to Lebanon in the Group A Division 2 quarterfinals won't soon be forgotten in Radford.
Had the Bobcats won, they would have been matched with a solid but unremarkable team from Buckingham County in the semifinals, a game the Bobcats could have had a great chance to win. That would have set up another rematch with James River, this one for the big prize.
What a spectacle that would have been.
