By Angela Watts
Senior Content Editor, DigitalSports.com
(Look below the story to find two separate video players — one with dozens of highlights from each of the National District semifinals played on Wednesday.)
Mount Vernon did it with a stingy defense that played lights-out in the third quarter. Yorktown used a sharp-shooting offensive attack that couldn’t miss in the fourth.
But the results were the same: Victories in their respective National District semifinal games Wednesday night at host Mount Vernon to set up Friday’s championship pairing.
Mount Vernon, which advanced with a a 64-59 victory over Stuart, and Yorktown, a 69-50 winner over Edison, split their two regular-season meetings this year. The Majors had the upper hand in the first meeting, a 10-point win on Jan. 22, but the Patriots avenged that earlier loss with a five-point victory on Valentines’ Day.
They will meet again at 9 p.m. Friday to decide who will earn the coveted district tournament banner for 2008. Mount Vernon last won the title in 2006; Yorktown in 2007.
“We’ll let’s see,” Patriots’ Coach Rich Avila said with a sly grin. “They’ve got home-court advantage. They’ve got the league’s offensive and defensive player of the year. So we’ll just see what happens.”
What happened Wednesday night is that both teams controlled their respective games from start-to-finish. Mount Vernon’s lead over Stuart was slimmer throughout, but the Majors still managed to hold an advantage at the end of each quarter.
And after a longer-than-usual half time speech from Coach Alfonso Smith, they clamped down in the third quarter and limited the often high-powered Raiders to just nine points to take a more comfortable, 46-38 lead into the final period.
“In the first half it wasn’t that we weren’t playing defense, but we weren’t playing it as good as we should,” junior swingman Robert Coleman said. “In the second half, we just played Major ‘D’ and that led to turnovers and fast breaks.”
And while the league’s aforementioned National District Offensive and Defensive Player of the Year — senior point guard Marquel DeLancey — had some highlight-reel moments, he most certainly shared the stage Wednesday night with underclassmen Coleman and Skylar Jones.
Jones paced the Majors with 19 points a piece and DeLancey added 16 more, leaving the trio to account for all but 10 of Mount Vernon’s total points scored.
Stuart got a three-pointer from sophomore guard Antonio Harris (team-high 17 points) with :19.4 seconds to play to cut what had been a 10-point Majors’ lead with 2:24 to play to 61-56, but it proved too late for a comeback.
“They’ve got some guys who can put the ball in the basket, and we all know that,” said Smith, whose Majors have won 23 of the last 24 meetings with the Raiders. “But everything for us started with defense. It really always does.”
Yorktown also played solid defense, but it was the Patriots’ unmatched perimeter offense that proved the difference in their nearly 20-point win over the Eagles. Yorktown hit six three-pointers on the night, five of which came off the hands of junior forward Simon Kilday.
In the fourth quarter Patriot sophomore Mike Veith and Kilday drained back-to-back three’s to open a 49-35 lead with 6:15 to play and send their student cheering section into a frenzy.
But even better: Kilday’s grandfather, Lowell, gave him a warm hug after the game and told him that his performance was the best birthday present ever. The elder Kilday was at the game celebrating his 77th year.
“If we’re playing up to the best we can play, there’s nobody we can’t beat,” said Simon Kilday, who scored a game-high 25 points. “If we come out and play to the maximum of our potential we’re very confident in our abilities.”
Edison senior forward Kendall Wallace nearly matched Kilday’s total, scoring a team-high 22 points. This came much to the dismay of the spirited Patriot crowd that serenaded Wallace every time he touched the ball.
“You can’t stop Kendall,” Kilday said. “He’s too tough inside. He’s strong and he’s going to get his buckets. But we figured as long as we contained everybody else we’d be okay.”
And despite Avila’s fears — and 17 more points from Eagles’ senior guard Jamire Davis — they were.
“I kept telling the guys not to get caught up because no lead is insurmountable for those guys,” Avila said. “Edison is an explosive team. They’ve just got so much firepower. You could have a 15-point lead, but then all of the sudden they could come back and, before you know it, the lead is gone.
“So I thought we did a good job of hanging in and countering when they did make their runs at us. We hit several big three’s to keep our lead going.”
Now the Patriots’ focus must switch to controlling another explosive team — the tournament hosts and their star senior.
“We held DeLancey to nine the last time we played, but he’s such a great player that he’s going to feel like he’s got something to prove,” Avila said. “So our guys are expecting that kind of performance from him. And we’ve got to see if we can match it.”
Email: awatts@digitalsports.com
GAME 1
J.E.B. Stuart 15 14 9 21 — 59
No. 8 Mount Vernon 16 15 15 18 — 64
Stuart — Ford 0 1-2 1; Harris 5 5-5 17; Zamman 0 1-2 1; Ibrahim 7 1-3 15; Champ 1 0-0 2; Essim 1 0-0 2. Team totals: 23 10-14 59. Mount Vernon — Smith 2 2-5 6; DeLancey 7 1-3 16; Coleman 7 2-3 19; Jones 8 3-4 19; Pruitt 0 0-2 0; Blanco 1 0-0 2; O’Dell 1 0-0 2. Team totals: 26 8-17 64. Three pointers — Stuart 3 (Harris 2, Ibrahim); Mount Vernon 4 (Coleman 3, DeLancey).
GAME 2
Edison 8 14 10 18 — 50
Yorktown 15 13 16 25 — 69
Edison — Washington 1 0-0 2; Haywood 1 0-0 2; Wallace 8 6-7 22; Muldron 1 0-0 2; Rogers 2 1-2 5; Davis 7 2-3 17. Team totals: 20 9-12 50. Yorktown — Veith 5 1-2 12; Sharp 0 1-2 1; Grebb 6 7-9 19; Reynolds 1 0-0 2; Kilday 9 2-2 25; Jones 0 3-4 3; Huntoon 2 1-1 5; Rall 1 0-0 2. Team totals: 24 15-20 69. Three pointers — Edison 1 (Davis); Yorktown 6 (Kilday 5, Veith).
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