ONA – Visiting George Washington came out with some pep in its step, while host Cabell Midland started somewhat slow in a clash of Class AAAA boys top-10 teams on Wednesday.
The No. 3 Patriots built a 10-point lead after one quarter and forced the No. 10 Knights to battle uphill all evening as GW came away with a 61-44 win on the road to remain unbeaten so far this season.
George Washington (11-0) shot the ball well in the first period and played tight defense as Midland (6-4) stumbled early. Ethan Bohm was the only Knight to score in the opening quarter as GW senior Ben Nicol and freshman Nash Lewis combined to shut down any Cabell Midland attempts at points in the paint.
“You want to do [start strong] every game, but especially here,” veteran GW coach Rick Green said. “You figure they’re going to be up. It’s a big conference game and they play really well at home. We thought it was really crucial how we started and I was really happy with our kids. I thought we got off to as good a start as we could.”
Cabell Midland coach J.J. Martin said he and his staff emphasized prior to Wednesday’s game how important it was to get off to a good start against GW, but his team was unable to follow through on that plan.
“It’s like we explained to our guys – when you get down 10 or 15 points against a team like that it’s going to be tough to come back,” Martin said. “If you start off bad against a team like that, it’s going to be tough to win. When you allow them to get the confidence and kind of feel like they can dictate the game, they’re going to do what they want to do. That’s kind of where I feel we got hurt.”
The Knights showed more fight in the second quarter and found a little bit of rhythm on offense, but still struggled to slow the Patriots on the other end as GW rattled off 18 points in the period to take a 33-17 lead into the locker room at halftime.
Midland was at its best in the third quarter when it outscored George Washington 15-11. The Knights cut the lead to just nine points with 1:40 to play in the third but could never get any closer.
“They’re just really disciplined,” Martin said of GW. “They’re really not ever too sped up and they make you play defense. Same with them on defense – they’re always on the help side and they’re always talking. I think we did pretty good speeding them up for a little bit and cut it to nine, but then fouls were getting called. We were fouling too much, just trying to play physical and make them play fast.”
The Patriots took advantage of those fouls down the stretch, going 9 of 12 at the foul line in the fourth quarter – including an 8 of 8 performance at the stripe in the final period by senior Brenden Hoffman – to keep Midland at arms’ length until the final buzzer.
Hoffman and junior Dawson Lunsford led GW with 15 points each, while junior Lukas Deem finished with 11. Nicol, a standout who is already committed to Ohio University, scored six points on a bad ankle. Greene said Nicol has practiced sparing since the Patriots’ recent win against Huntington and while he wasn’t his usual self in the scoring column he found other ways to contribute with his defense, passing and rebounding.
“What Ben does is he gets the ball to those people, and I don’t mind saying it now but since Huntington on the 10th, he has practiced maybe 30 minutes,” Greene said. “He’s got a really bad ankle. We didn’t know if he would go today, but it has gotten a lot better. He would never say a word about it.
“He makes us go. Ben is that guy who… I’ll say it this way – I think there are really good and great players, but the superstars make everyone else better, and [Nicol] is that.”
Cabell Midland’s Dominic Schmidt led all scorers with 18 points on Wednesday and was the only Knight to finish in double figures.
“I thought we defended [Schmidt] about as well as you could,” Greene said. “I thought Lukas [Deem] did a great job on him, then Ashton [Gute] came in. Our whole philosophy on him is, you’re not going to stop him because he’s too good. So make him work and make sure those other guys who depend on him to get the ball, make sure they’re covered. That was the gameplan – don’t let someone who averages six [points] get 14 because you’re trying to stop Dominic with three guys. We just want to make him work.”
Midland is scheduled to be back in action Friday at home against neighboring rival Huntington High, while George Washington hits the road Friday to take on Kanawha County and Mountain State Athletic Conference rival Riverside.