Gallery by Heather Belcher
Charleston – The calendar may have read St. Patrick’s Day but luck didn’t favor the Irish.
It also didn’t help that Eli Allen didn’t take any mercy on them.
Allen scored 14 points to go along with 18 rebounds and nine assists as No. 1 James Monroe throttled No. 4 St. Joseph 67-44 Thursday evening in the Class A semifinals at the Charleston Coliseum and Convention Center.
With the win James Monroe advances to the Class A championship for the first time in school history where it will play sectional opponent Greater Beckley for the fourth and final time this season.
Scorching from the start, the Mavericks took control early and never took their foot off the gas, jumping out to a 7-0 lead as Allen sliced the Irish defense up.
“I think it was all coaching,” James Monroe coach Matt Sauvage said jokingly. “No, I just think these boys were ready to play. I really do. I’d love to say it was the assistant coaches and I that got it going, but you know we can only do so much. We can give them the plan but these boys got to execute and I thought as a whole they executed to a tee.”
Savage’s assessment was correct from the jump.
Allen immediately got to work, finding Josh Burks in the corner for a 3 and dishing to Cameron Thomas inside for a layup. Another lay-up through contact for Collin Fox at the 6:18 mark staked the Mavs to a 7-0 advantage but a three-minute drought allowed the Irish to wiggle out of the hole on the back of a 3 and a jumper from Jesse Muncy.
After Shad Sauvage and Caden Ehrim traded 3-pointers to make it a 12-9 game, a 6-0 run featuring scores from Thomas, Sauvage and Burks staked the Mavs to an 18-9 lead after a quarter – one that ballooned to 26-11 with an 8-2 run to open the second stanza.
The Irish staggered the rest of the quarter, keeping the deficit at 15 with a trio of foul shots but another 6-0 run to the end the quarter staked the Mavs to a daunting 37-16 lead at the intermission.
Meanwhile the Irish struggled the find a rhythm with the 3-point shot failing them. They finished 2 of 17 from downtown in the first half and 4 of 37 from beyond the arc on the night.
“I thought we had some good quality shots,” Irish head coach Todd Maynard said. “Now did we force some? But that’s the way we play. I mean we like to get up and down. Sometimes we’re all about high volume. You shoot more you might make more, right? We had good floor spacing and ball movement and we got good shots tonight and we didn’t knock em down, but defensively they played a really good ballgame.”
Despite the poor showing from beyond the arc, St. Joseph’s opportunity to claw back came in the third quarter when Allen picked up three fouls in the first three minutes, joining Thomas on the bench.
With both players sitting, the Irish trimmed the deficit to 14 at the 4:43 mark but the Mavericks’ reserves answered when their numbers were called.
Cooper Ridgeway and A.J. Walker played the final four minutes of the half and excelled, helping the Mavs push the lead back to 18 with 2:46 left in the quarter.
“A.J. and Cooper, and Josh, Shad and Collin – they were able to hold the lead and hold serve so to speak,” Sauvage said. “And so I felt like once we got through the third we were in really good position. But that goes back to it takes more than the first five we’ve got out there. It takes a team and I felt like this game of all games, probably of all the 27 we’ve played so far, because of the shooting the way it was, the team game on the defensive side is what won the game for us.”
A 3-pointer form Zayvion Johnson eight seconds into the fourth cut the lead to 13 but a 9-0 Maverick run over the following four minutes put the game to bed.
Allen, who sat most of the third quarter with four fouls, put the exclamation point on the game with a dunk.
After the game Maynard had high praise for the Mavericks.
“James Monroe is the real deal,” Maynard said. “If I could bet Muncy’s Cavalier there, they’re probably going to win this thing. They made us very, very uncomfortable and put us out of what we do offensively. We didn’t shoot very well but that’s because they contested a lot of shots and applied a lot of pressure. I thought we had to speed them up a little bit and you do not want to speed up James Monroe but we did.”
Maynard divulged into specifics, complimenting the Mavericks’ trio of guards.
“No. 0, I think that was (Josh) Burks, he applies pressure, pressure, pressure,” Maynard added. “What we try to teach our guys is defensively, lets try to make people uncomfortable. Don’t let them just do what they want to do and that’s what they did to us. But they’ve got three guards that are probably the best in the state I don’t care what class it is. The Allen kid is just a phenomenal, phenomenal player. He’s the real deal. He may be – I would say he’s probably in the top two players in the state.”
Four players scored in double figures for the Mavericks, led by 17 points and 14 rebounds from Collin Fox. Thomas and Sauvage were the other two players that joined Allen and Fox in that department with 13 and 14, respectively.
Zayvion Johnson led the Irish with 17 points while Muncy collected 14.
Email: tylerjackson@lootpress.com and follow on Twitter @tjack94
