For 24 hours now I have been ✍ about just how respectful I am of Head Coach Anthony Barnes and his Boys 👦 Basketball 🏀 program. Now I’m going to share my take on just how driven I believe that Marc Motley and Alyssa Ervin are.
I encourage ànyone with 20 minutes to spare to go back to the beginning of the season on our site and find where I boldly stated that our Girls 👧 Basketball team would return to the State Tournament. The exact line was don’t book the Richmond Hotel Rooms yet but block off the dates.
Motley and Ervin had no choice but to go ALL IN on getting back to the State Eight. It’s certainly Ervin’s last shot and possibly her Coaches as well.
Everyone not named Motley and Ervin needed the time to grow into their roles and they had the entire regular season to work on it. The group made great strides across the board but they had the safety net of knowing that if we get in trouble that we have Alyssa to get us there.
Allen Worrell has written a gamer and the Good Folks at the Roanoke Times have offered their take so why not have some fun with it.
The line is you can’t win the lottery if you don’t play the lottery so translate to hoops, you can’t Win the State Championship if you don’t qualify for it. Knowing that they needed everyone to be at their best, Motley and Ervin came up with a tremendous plan. The clip above talks about how the Captain burned his ships 🚢 to motivate his crew……
Rare chance that I was sitting on press row and the third and fourth fouls called on Ervin happened (or didn’t happen) three feet from me. Motley left his star 🌟 in the game and just :51 seconds later picked up a technical foul after tumbling onto the court. The Con was on and a brilliant Con it was.
Playing in a building where you have zero history and playing a team with a 22-3 record that simply doesn’t like you.
Your Coach is now 1 technical foul from being tossed and your star player is one foul call from being a spectator and your lead is just 25-23.
Fast Forward and do the math and you will see that the remaining 19 minutes + equalled 37-19. One point shy of doubling the Warriors up while Ervin was forced to play with one arm tied behind her back. We played defense 4.2 on 5 and held them to 19 points !!!!
The fan base as a whole became more energetic ten fold because of the situation. The players in the seven person rotation all saw their season flashing in front of their eyes 👀.
Madison Lyons played at a level that was off the charts. The chase for every rebound and her 10 points were just the start of the Avalanche. I just checked to see if I received the box score to verify whether she recorded a double – double, while I can’t state with certainty, I am pretty comfortable.
Let’s not stop there, Sarah Alderman was positioning herself in a manner that I hadn’t seen before. If she didn’t reach 10 rebounds she had to be close, also adding 6 points.
Katie Lam (11 points) made a huge adjustment when she wasn’t connecting from deep after opening the game with a 3-pointer. The Senior started driving 🚗 to the basket 🧺, not only scoring but helping three MV players foul out.
Callie Harris is now playing with a level of confidence that I didn’t see her reaching this season. Being a undersized Sophomore playing point guard 💂♂️ on a team starting four Seniors is an overwhelming task and she is embracing the role. Six points, 4 of 4 from the line and a putback basket that might have been a dagger 🗡.
Corrie Delp, was there a fourth quarter rebound or loose ball the Road Runner (Beep, Beep) didn’t gather ?
Kacie Young provided quality minutes when playing in place of Lyons.
Time to recap – Coach and Star pupil devised a plan where it appears that the season is going off the cliff and everyone has to try and Fred Flintstone the breaks. The plan was nothing short of genius but like a trick play in football I’m not sure you can use it again ???
But with the way our Ladies responded, I am not sure that it’s needed.
The Con was on, and two things showed it. Ervin processed her fourth foul too well (5 decades of covering games, very first time I ever questioned a referee) and Motley really sold the Technical Foul by landing near center Court.
I’ve been comparing Motley and Ervin to Geno and Stewart at UCONN for a while now. After today, I am not sure Geno isn’t saying why didn’t I ever try that one ?
We are playing Basketball 🏀 next week, just as I said we would all season ! Love it when other people playing at a high level make me look like I know something !
Editing Assist to Vickey Ritchie !!!
Here’s my own edit at 1:57 am editors note – I just now read the Gamer that Allen Worrell wrote, having to get out of the Coliseum immediately after the conclusion to the game for a Funeral service, I didn’t get to speak to anyone after the game besides saying goodbye to a couple of folks.
My story would have been much easier to create if I had read Allen’s Gamer first. Toooooo funny !
