AUGUSTA — There may not be another team in the state that plays Cony’s all-out, full-court trapping defense. That’s what makes the Rams so hard to prepare for.
Friday night, seventh-seeded Cony forced 26 turnovers en route to a 60-46 upset of No. 2 Hampden Academy. The win puts the Rams in the semifinals of the Class A North tournament for the first time since 2003.
Cony (11-9) will face No. 3 Oceanside on Wednesday at the Augusta Civic Center. Hampden finishes its season at 13-5.
Win or lose, the Rams have been fun to watch all season as coach T.J. Maines substitutes five players at a time every 90 seconds or so. And it’s starting to pay off.
“The last couple of games we’ve just really had a good defensive game,” said junior Jordan Roddy who scored a game-high 16 points. “Our defensive rotations have been good and we were able to shoot the ball pretty good and score, too.”
The Rams led 26-24 at the half but the game took a significant turn when Hampden junior Ian McIntyre picked up his third and fourth fouls, both offensive, at the start of the third quarter. The burly 6-foot-5 center scored 52 points and grabbed 40 rebounds in two regular-season meetings against Cony.
“He’s been the best player we’ve played against all year,” Maines said. “We haven’t taken more than two charges in a game all year but that’s what we’ve been working on in practice and tonight we got our feet there.”
Roddy and Taylor Heath (12 points) opened the third quarter with back-to-back 3-pointers, Roddy followed with a bank shot and Kolton Vining converted a rebound and suddenly the lead was 36-24. Three-point plays from Tommy Raye (14) and John Wolfington (12) helped keep the Broncos close and three straight Cony turnovers early in the fourth quarter led to a 7-0 run to shrink the lead to 42-37. Heath followed with two straight steals off Cony’s zone press and sophomore Austin Parlin (15) hit a 3 from the left side to make it 48-37.
“We had some bad turnovers,” Hampden coach Russ Bartlett said. “We made two lateral passes in situations that ended up in layups. You can;t guard those run-outs.”
Maines credited junior Ahmade Carter as one of the keys to the Rams second-half defensive pressure.
“Ahmade in the stat book doesn’t show like he did a lot but he impacted the game in a big way,” Maines said. “Jordan Roddy has not scored the way Jordan’s capable of and he had a great game tonight. And then Austin Parlin made some shots we go ‘no, yeah,’ Parlin made three 3-pointers, two in the fourth quarter. He followed up a three-point play by Carter with a big 3 from the right side to make it 54-42 with just under three minutes left.
“It was a good team win,” Heath said. “Our defense really carried us throughout the game. We had a lot of kids in passing lanes and we had a couple of steals near the end and we just stuck it out.”
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