Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992 TAG: 9203080205
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: M.J. DOUGHERTY CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: BRISTOL LENGTH: Medium
Virginia High School's three starting guards - Jason "Fire" Stevens, Adrian "Lightning" Sensabaugh and Robbie "Ice" Howard - combined for 55 points. And they played tight second-half defense.
Those elements enabled Virginia High to run past the Indians 74-58 in the Region IV boys' basketball final at Bearcat Den.
Both teams will be host to Group AA sub-state playoff games next weekend against teams from Region III. Blacksburg (19-6) will be host to regional champion Northside at a site to be determined. Virginia High (21-4), which won its first regional title since 1988, will play Laurel Park at Emory & Henry.
Virginia High trailed by five points early in the second half when it got its offense going. In the next four minutes, the Bearcats went on a 15-2 run and moved in front 36-28.
"We were sluggish on defense and confused on offense" in the first half, said Howard, the region's player of the year, who scored the last five points of the surge. "Then we picked it up in the second half. We knew it was our last two quarters to do something."
That something amounted to 53 points over the last 16 minutes, including 41 by the "Trifecta" - as the trio of guards call themselves.
It also meant continually switching defenders to prevent Blacksburg point guard Darren Morton from taking control.
"Playing defense on [Morton] got our offense going," Sensabaugh said. "Once we figured out we could play defense, it gave us confidence in our offense. We started firing up good shots. And the defense got stronger."
Morton finished with 13 points, his season average, but he wasn't his normal self, getting only a couple of assists and steals apiece.
"It seemed like everybody was covering me," Morton said. "They kept having different people cover me. It looked like they did more switching in the second half."
The switching was planned to do exactly what it did - keep Morton off-balance.
"I told them to pick the intensity up," Virginia High coach Mike Cartolaro said of his halftime speech. "I knew Morton was a very good player, and he was dictating the tempo. We had to work harder to make the game quicker."
The change of pace put Blacksburg's offense out of sync, enabling the Bearcats to go on their run.
"We didn't run our offense well, set up well on either end," said the Indians' Jon Maher, who was held to 10 points, seven under his average. "We tried to getting into a running game with them. We didn't work our offense."
And while the change in tempo caused the Indians' offensive woes, it turned Virginia High into a juggernaut. Not only did it exceed its first-half output of 21 points in each of the final two quarters, it shot better than 79 percent on field-goal attempts while doing it.
"In the first half, we were sitting back," said Stevens, who finished with 18 points. "Then we lit it up in the second half."
Sensabaugh had 18 points, and Howard finished with 19.
Matt Smith paced Blacksburg with 19 points, nine on three desperation 3-pointers in the final 2 1/2 minutes. \
see microfilm for box score
by CNB