South River senior Daniel Stecklow was quick to turn up the locker room music on the other side of this one.
Faced with disaster against its fiercest rival, Southern, in the fourth quarter, Seahawks boys basketball recommitted to its best features — rebounding and defense — to pull out a 72-62 victory over the Bulldogs on Saturday.
At this point of the season, a loss to a bubble team could’ve cost South River a county championship spot. It did last season. But in this season especially, that opportunity is guaranteed to no one, with about a third of the county teams still in contention.
It all depends on who wins these next few games, and South River (11-3), which lost a nonconference game to Arundel last month and faces Northeast and the Wildcats next week, is deeply aware. But the Seahawks are trying to ignore it for their own sake.
“We’re a team with a 1-0 mentality every week,” Jack Schrader said. “If we keep doing that, there’s nothing that can stop us.”
Five Seahawks hit double figures in the ruthless back-and-forth game: Schrader (19 points), James Crimaudo (14 points), Liam Barney (13 points), Jaden McDuffie (11 points) and Jonah Hall (10 points).
“Jack is Mr. Consistent,” South River coach Darren Hall said. “You can’t rattle him.”
The Bulldogs (7-4) had a chance to derail the Seahawks from the very start. Southern cleared shots where South River could not, building a modest lead but tangible momentum.
What it couldn’t do was out-body the Seahawks on the glass, nor prevent a burgeoning turnover issue South River was more than happy to capitalize on.
It didn’t matter that Southern double- or triple-teamed Crimaudo, rendering the team’s leading scorer invisible offensively. What the Bulldogs didn’t know — because Crimaudo didn’t even tell his teammates last night — was that he’d injured his hand in Friday’s 31-point performance against Annapolis.
“They’re bringing extra attention to him knowing he can end a game in himself — which just opens things up for me and Jaden, because we got nobody on us,” Schrader said.
Schrader more than made up for it, hitting a fadeaway 3-pointer at the first-quarter buzzer to give South River the lead for good, a highlight of his 10 first-half points. Southern starters Rex Wooster and Brian Griffin (24 points) chiseled at the deficit with their makes, but Southern seemingly had no solution for the Seahawks when they wanted to score.
Trailing 32-20, Southern coach Will Maynard called his team in. Chipping away wasn’t going to cut it. He needed his Bulldogs to come out of timeout swinging pickaxes.
A 7-0 run at the end of the half cut South River’s lead to 41-27, iced by guard Anthony Thomas’ somewhat accidental 3-pointer at the buzzer.
Hall knew better than to look at that run like a flash in the pan. This was a rivalry game, and the Bulldogs came with empty stomachs. His Seahawks were in danger.
The Bulldogs opened the second half with a 10-2 streak, unrelenting when Crimaudo spoke up with a bucket. Southern’s defense laid successful traps and boxed Seahawks out in the post while Griffin, Gavin Crampton and Davin Kess shot threes. Southern trailed just 55-49 at the end of the third quarter, then 55-52 a moment later.
“We got too comfortable,” McDuffie said. “St. Mary’s, Meade, Arundel, we’re up about 20 points and we give up the lead at the end. We usually turn back up in the fourth quarter, but we need to stay consistent.”
The Seahawks’ timeouts increased as their lead declined. Once, Hall gave the lead to his players to say their piece to each other.
“Us coaches didn’t have to say too much. They said it all,” Hall said. “And then they came out and executed. When they stepped up, they were pumped.”
When South River won rebounds, it won the game. Misses became putbacks. Resets went from 2-point attempts to threes.
Maynard identified the obvious problem, but couldn’t stop him: McDuffie. The Spalding transfer always had a bloodhound’s nose for the ball, but Hall describes the sophomore’s defensive style lately as “pogo sticks.”
“He got some rebounds where the coaches and I look at each other like: how did he even do that?” Hall said. “I can’t speak enough what he means for us.”
The Seahawks opted for a zone defense and attacked up top. McDuffie could feel the panic rising in his foes when the turnovers came more easily, and that once thin gap for Southern to step over became a canyon, 70-57, with only three minutes to go. A layup from Ethan Sheffey, even a 3-pointer by Griffin, wasn’t going to do much.
“[McDuffie] controlled the game defensively, and we were doing a bad job of not flashing to the middle, not attacking, kind of holding a little bit,” Maynard said. “But a lot of that is because of [South River’s] great defense.”
And Crimaudo, trapped and injured (or not), returned to himself.
His was the 3-pointer that established the 10-point lead, his trips to the free throw line that broke the news to the Bulldogs that a win was not happening for them.
Adversity, McDuffie said, is just something this Seahawks group has learned to overcome.
“Even when we’re down, most teams crumble, miss shots, don’t bring the ball up,” he said. “We stay together and we stay locked in and march as a team.”
