Wildcats back in familiar territory

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For the third time in as many years, Lexington will play in the Class 4A Lower State Championship.

The Wildcats knocked off rival White Knoll for the fourth time this season, this time a 56-43 victory to earn a trip to Florence on Friday night to face another familiar foe — Aiken. The Green Hornets knocked off Wando on the other side of the bracket. Lexington has defeated Aiken twice this season by a margin of 26 points each time.

“It’s pretty nice,” Lexington coach Bailey Harris said of making a third consecutive trip to the state semifinals. “I didn’t think our region was particularly strong but we had three of the final four left in the Lower State and now it’s us and Aiken. They play extremely hard, a scrappy bunch that gets after it and they know us pretty well, too.”

Harris was particularly wary of the Timberwolves (15-14). Lexington (23-5) owned three victories against White Knoll by an average of 32.3 points so Harris thought the task of defeating the same team four times in the same season and seven times over the past two seasons would be a challenge.

The fact that White Knoll coach Brett Jones played and coached under Harris for seven years made the situation that much more interesting.

“It’s not like we don’t know each other,” Harris said. “We’ve played seven times in the last two years. Brett can pretty much diagram our offense for us. There’s definitely no secrets.”

But a blazing start almost put all those fears to rest. The Wildcats opened the game on a 13-2 run and were forcing White Knoll to play at their pace.

“Once they got down, they had to speed their offense up a little bit,” Harris said. “Their strength is their post players, and they tried to get it inside to them. I was pleased, especially defensively, in the first half.”

Shaq Roland scored the first five points on a layup and a 3-pointer to set the tone. He finished with 22 points, and every time the Timberwolves drew the margin under double-digits, Roland seemed to make a play.

“I thought he played well on both ends of the floor,” Harris said. “He made some plays when we needed them. That’s what your fourth-year All-State player is supposed to do.”

Roland finished with seven points in the opening quarter. White Knoll dug itselft the early deficit by going 1-for-7 from the field with seven turnovers. Jones knew once the deficit reached double-digits he had to change his strategy. White Knoll tried to slow it down and get the ball inside to Keith Jumper and Julian Johnson but decided to play normally after the first quarter.

White Knoll finished with 19 turnovers, 12 in the first half.

“We tried to move the ball and run some clock but we turned it over and got down big,” Jones said. “We decided we had to play at that point and I thought we defended them a little bit better than we have. We have young guards and putting the ball in the basket has been our Achilles heel all year. But you have to give Lexington credit. They are very long, lean and smart. They’ve played together three or four years now, and I think you could see some of that experience paying off.”

The margin was never closer than seven points after the first quarter and no closer than 11 points in the second half.

Joby Glymph added 13 points for Lexington and ran the point position as well as he has all season. The Wildcats had five turnovers and were able to get easy shots in the lane or go to the free throw line on many second possessions.

“They switched a few things up,” Harris said. “They came out and went almost exclusively man but Joby did a good job of getting us in what we needed to get in.”

Johnson and Jumper led White Knoll with 15 points each. The Timberwolves entered the postseason as a No. 5 seed and won their first two playoff games in school history. They will lose two seniors off of this team.

“I’m very proud of our guys,” Jones said. “They fought and played to the best of their ability and just fell to a better team.”

  WK – Julian Johnson 15, Keith Jumper 15, Logan 5, Hunter 4, Bradley 2, Ray 2. L – Shaq Roland 22, Joby Glymph 13, West 8, Gates 5, Cook 4, McDermott 4.