Maryland high school basketball news and notes (1/24/204)
Slow and steady has defined River Hill boys basketball the last two decades. The Hawks have gone way off script this season.
Similar to the “40 minutes of hell” of the early to mid-1990s University of Arkansas’ men squads, River Hill is terrorizing opponents with a frenetic pace, marking a 12-1 start (9-0 in Howard County).
“It’s kind of got me feeling young again,” longtime River Hill coach Matt Graves said to the Baltimore Sun.
River Hill coach Matt Graves (sitting with clipboard) has switched gears this season, going from a slow, deliberate half-court attack to a high scoring, uptempo style. The Hawks have won 12 of their first 13 decisions.
Photo by Derek Toney
The Hawks are averaging nearly 80 points per game (77.7 ppg). They’ve scored 80 or more points three times this season, including a 110-point effort.
River Hill scored 80 points (overtime game) once last season.
“I knew we could do this,” Hawks senior Ojinne Ndu said to The Sun. “I knew we were going to be really good coming into this year. A lot of people on this team could start on any team in Howard County. We just know that we have a lot of good players on this team and expected this.”
Ndu, a 6-foot-2 guard who missed last season because of an ACL injury, along with fellow seniors Aiden Igwebe, Soma Unegbu and Braden Sauritch (point guard), headlines arguably Graves’ most athletic squad since taking over River Hill’s varsity in 2004.
A former assistant at Lynchburg College (now University of Lynchburg) Graves contacted several coaches during the summer about playing uptempo on both ends, including Penn State men’s coach Mike Rhoads, who was coaching at Randolph Macon when Graves was at Lynchburg.
“We’re still good friends and I reached out to him saying, ‘I need some of that havoc defense.’ He sent me some game tape and showed me some drills. I reached out to some high school coaches in the Carolinas and researched what the University of Alabama team does,” Graves said. “It was almost like a project. I said, ‘OK, let’s put this project to work this year. Let’s have fun with it.'”
Four of the Hawks’ starting five are averaging double figures. River Hill’s lowest-point output so far this season was 58 in its lone loss to Milford Mill.
Last season, the Hawks scored 58 points or less nine times (won six). For years, River Hill ran a Princeton-style offense to control the pace.
Graves knew he had “the tools” to try something vastly different this season.
“You just don’t wake up one morning and say, ‘OK, let’s go ahead and run and try to score 80 points a game, shoot it 65 to 70 times a game,’” said Graves, who guided River Hill to the Class 3A state title in 2006 (team averaged 55 ppg). “You’ve got to have the players who could do it and it’s been a match made in heaven with what I have here.”
The Baltimore Catholic League will hold its 53rd tournament at Goucher College, March 1-3
Four opening round games will take place on March 1 (3 p.m., 4:45 p.m., 6:30 p.m., and 8:15 p.m.) with semifinals the following day at 5 and 7 p.m. The championship finale will be March 3 at 3 p.m.
It will be the second straight year Goucher is hosting the BCL Tournament. The Division III school located in Towson, Md. has hosted all three rounds of play 12 times and the semifinal and final rounds twice.
