Cannon’s state tournament win over Covenant Day has a familiar feel
JOE HABINA Special to the Independent Tribune
JOE HABINA Special to the Independent Tribune
- CONCORD – The North Carolina Independent Schools Athletic Association chose to forgo conference basketball tournaments this season, but this year’s 4A state playoffs seem eerily similar to a Charlotte Independent Schools Athletic Association tourney for the Cannon School boys basketball team.
- Thursday’s 68-52 triumph over league rival Matthews Covenant Day in the first round of the state tournament guaranteed the Cougars they would play a quarterfinal game on Saturday at Charlotte Latin, the team with whom Cannon School shared this season’s CISAA regular-season championship.
- Charlotte Latin is the second seed in the NCISAA 4A West Region, while Cannon is seeded fourth. The two teams will be playing each other for the third time in 12 days. In the following round, Saturday’s winner will possibly play another CISAA team, Charlotte Christian, which has a quarterfinal game against top-seeded Carmel Christian.
- “I’m not sure of the rationale behind this,” said Cannon coach Che Roth. “It’s fun because we’re continuing to play, but it doesn’t feel like a state tournament at this point; it feels like a conference tournament. And that’s fine because we get another game and we continue to play.
- “We’ll get (Latin’s) best shot. They’ll get ours. We obviously know them very well. They’re a very well-coached team. They have a lot of good pieces. They’re really tough to beat at home. They shoot the ball extremely well. But I have a high belief in our guys that we’ll come ready to play and answer the bell.”
- In Covenant Day (8-11 overall), Cannon (24-5) was facing another team for the third time. The Cougars won the both regular-season matchups.
- Nix
- In a lot of ways, Cannon beat Covenant Day on Thursday the same way it wins a lot of games: a heavy man-to-man halfcourt defense turned plenty of turnovers into transition baskets, junior D.J. Nix assertively scored a game-high 26 points, senior sharpshooter Jarvis Moss (14 points) came up big in the fourth quarter, and classmate Elijah Ormiston scored his usual quiet double-figure points, 13 in this case.
- But it was a couple of Cougars playing their subplot roles perfectly that made the difference. Seven-foot junior Christian Reeves held his own against his Covenant Day counterpart, 6-9 Ifeanyi Ufochukwu. And Cougars guard Deuce Rolle played the game’s best defense at the most critical time and also got the best use out of the floor burns he collected.
- Cannon started slowly as it took most of the first quarter to learn that it needed to respect Ufochukwu’s authority in the paint. He once blocked four straight shots, two each on Karon Boyd and Reeves, a friend and AAU teammate.
- “I’m not going to lie,” said Rolle. “(Driving to the basket with Ufochukwu present) is intimidating. But you just have to go up strong, you’ve got to get into his body and draw some kind of contact and avoid him blocking your shot.”
- For the game, Ufochukwu threatened to record a triple-double, finishing with 13 blocks, nine points and eight rebounds. But he picked up his second foul with two minutes left in the first quarter and spent the rest of the period and the first two-and-a-half minutes of the second on the bench.
- Cannon used that time to build a solid lead, outscoring Covenant Day 25-4 between the 3:15 mark of the first quarter and the 5:45 mark of the second. Ormiston, Nix, and Moss all hit 3-pointers early in the second period as the Cougars led 31-13 midway through.
- Between the second and third quarters, Reeves grabbed eight of his game-high 13 rebounds. For the game, he also compiled four blocks and six points.
- “(Ufochukwu’s) a good player,” said Reeves. “I played AAU with and against him so I know his game pretty well, and we were just going at it. They have another guy that’s 6-7 or 6-8 (Michael Markus) and we were both going at it and with Eli (Ormiston), too.”
- Ufochukwu had three more blocks in the third quarter, but he was also called for goaltending three times. It helped the Cougars keep some separation with the Lions, whose Aden Holloway was a one-man wrecking crew in the third quarter.
- The guard scored 10 of his game-high 20 points as Covenant Day got as close as seven points twice in the third period and once in the fourth. But Holloway was held scoreless in the final period, due largely to his matchup with Rolle.
- Rolle had already established himself as an ultimate team player earlier in the game when he twice dove for loose balls to keep possession for the Cougars. The most impressive came in the second period when he hit the hardwood under his own basket then lunged to skip a bounce pass to Moss, who immediately sank a 3 from the left wing.
- “That’s just doing what the team needs,” said Rolle, a senior. “Coach always emphasizes getting on the floor. Somebody has to get down so we can keep possession. I just have to offer my body up like (Roth) says for the team.”
- SCORING SUMMARY
- Covenant Day 8 14 15 15 -- 52
- Cannon School 12 26 13 17 -- 68
- COVENANT DAY – Aden Holloway 20, J. Brown 8, M. Brown 6, Boyce 3, Anderson 2, Ufochukwu 9, Markus 4
- CANNON SCHOOL – Swartz 3, Elijah Ormiston 13, Rolle 4, Jarvis Moss 14, D.J. Nix 26, Boyd 2, Reeves 6
