St. Christopher's clinches regular season Prep League title

They controlled their destiny.

Defeat a tough St. Anne’s-Belfield squad, Coach Hamill Jones’s guys from St. Christopher’s knew entering Tuesday night’s game with the visiting Saints from Charlottesville, and they would secure at least a share of the Prep League regular season championship.

They had one loss in the league, and a game at Collegiate remaining on Friday. They were well aware that Woodberry Forest, with two losses, was still in the mix, so, hey, their mission was about as straightforward as it can get: play hard, play smart, play as a unit, and, yes, keep winning.

Mission accomplished.

Competing with defensive intensity, offensive intentionality, and power in the paint, St. Christopher’s scored a well-earned, never-in-doubt 68-41 victory in Scott Gymnasium that positioned them well to realize their goal.

Then, as they headed home following their postgame talk, they received word that Trinity Episcopal had come from behind to defeat Woodberry 61-57 on the road earlier in the evening.

So, with an assist from the Titans, they’d clinched the regular season title and the assurance of home games throughout the tournament next week.

“The Prep League is a great league,” Jones said. “It’s always very competitive. We’ve just tried to take it one step at a time and focus on the game at hand.”

The Saints (19-4) led 11-5 after the first quarter and used a 15-6 run sparked by 3-pointers by Brady Burnette and Elex Churchwell early in the second to establish control and head into the locker room up 33-19.

“Beforehand, preparing for the game, it was, if we win this, we set the stage for ourselves,” said Burnette, a 6-2 junior guard who finished with 12 points. “Once the ball goes in the air, you’re just playing possession by possession.

“It’s less of thinking about controlling your destiny than win this game and it’s on to the next.”

In the first half, the Saints shot 13-for-30 forced nine turnovers while committing just three, limited STAB (13-13) to 7-for-22 shooting, and outrebounded the visitors 19-14.

They were just getting started.

Burnette and crew opened the third quarter with 7-3 run to go up 40-22 and ended with six unanswered points (floater by Damari Smith, who scored 14 points, followed by Darius Gray’s inside bucket off a Smith assist followed by Gray’s two free throws) to take a 49-28 lead into the fourth.

“Defensively, we played very well,” Burnette said. “The focus coming into the game was (man-to-man) defense. Earlier in the season, we were all over the place defensively and had to work on some things.

“The last couple of weeks, we’ve really honed it in, and it showed in this game: fighting over the screens and playing as hard as you can.”

SC put the game away with a 19-13 final quarter.

“I feel like every game’s the same,” said Gray, a 6-4, 285-pound force whose ledger read 10 points, 13 rebounds, six assists, and two steals. “Every game’s a big game, and every game is an opportunity for the team to get better.”

Try as they might, the Saints from STAB had little success with their 1-2-2 and later man-to-man defending Gray and 6-6 senior Nate Roberts inside. Likewise, they had little success attacking the basket with SC’s two imposing big men controlling the paint.

Roberts contributed 18 points on 7-for-9 shooting and 4-of-5 free throws, nine rebounds, a block, and an assist.

“I knew that they were going to collapse on our other guys,” said Roberts, “so it gave me a lot of open shots. I just had to make them.

“Everyone was going to collapse on Darius inside, so I had to look for the back door cut, give myself some open looks, and get to the foul line and knock them down.

“It was a little physical both ways, but we know how to fight back and fight through it.”

STAB’s Jayden Brown entered the game averaging 22.5 points. SC, with Burnette pulling yeoman’s duty, limited him to a single 3-pointer and one free throw.

Teammates Shamar Curley (17 points) and Axel Itrube (3 points) took up the offensive slack.

“We knew we couldn’t let Jayden Brown get hot,” Roberts said. “He’s their top offensive player. We knew if we stopped him, they wouldn’t score a lot. That opened up a lot of opportunities for us.”

All told, the victors shot 27-for-60 from the field and 6-for-8 from the free throw line and dealt 17 team assists. They forced 13 turnovers and committed just four, limited the visitors to 14-for-44 shooting, and outrebounded them 42-25. 

“There are always things to fix,” said Gray, “but I definitely feel like from the start of the season to now, we’ve become a very quick team and been able to grow our chemistry. We still can get better. That’s what we’re working on.”