Saturday night’s penultimate game in the Lea’s Winter Classic basketball matchup between Patrick Henry and Greenbrier East played out for three quarters like a battle of chugging locomotives.
That’s when the wheels came off the track for the perennial West Virginia powerhouse from Lewisburg.
Holding Greenbrier scoreless with stops on 11 straight possessions to start the fourth quarter, Patrick Henry overcame a six point deficit to defeat the Spartans 56-52 in the Winter Classic at the Berglund Center.
Greenbrier East gave PH plenty of help, turning the final frame into a series of turnovers and misfires that led to the Spartans not scoring their first point of the quarter until hitting on the front end of a one-and-one by Karim Ezzedine with 24.1 seconds remaining. By that time the Patriots had a 54-49 lead.
Although Spartan Gavin Smith pulled Greenbrier to within 54-52 on the 3-pointer with 9.6 seconds left, PH’s Andrew Harris, who had a game-high 17 points for the Patriots, put the game away by hitting both ends of a 1+1 with 8.7 seconds left to settle the final margin.
Greenbrier East, coached by noted billionaire businessman and West Virginia gubernatorial candidate Jim Justice, was out of sync most of the night.
“We did not play well tonight and we executed very poorly,” Justice commented afterward. “I’m not happy. We’ve got a lot of work to do. We just shot the ball poorly.”
It was a slugfest for three quarters with Greenbrier dominating in the paint ands PH hanging on to stay within striking distance.
The Spartans led 15-11 after one quarter and led by seven, 31-24 and 33-26, before PH closed to 34-29 at the halftime break.
Patrick Henry rallied to start the third quarter and took the lead 39-37 on a 3-pointer by Dawson Robinson midway through the period. Greenbrier retook the lead 41-39 on a trey by Caleb Ward and the Spartans finished the third with a 7-3 run to send the game to the final 8 minutes with Greenbrier up 48-42.
Quishon Calfee’s monster slam got PH to within 48-46 and Terrell Anderson knotted things at 48 with a layup moments later as Greenbrier saw its draught deepen. A Harris layup put the Patriots up 50-48 before the Spartans followed with two more turnovers.
Harris put PH up 52-48 with another layup and Greenbrier followed by missing both ends of a two short foul, getting the rebound and being whistled for traveling. PH went to the spread and squeezed out the finish.
Greenbrier shot a woeful 20% from the field in the second half.
“We closed the game and finished it out,” PH head coach Jack Esworthy noted in the Patriot locker room. “Number 55 (Ezzedine) and #2 (Seth Brown) were hard to guard. We played our man-to-man better in the second half, rebounded the ball better and played all-round better defense. We’ve been playing well and now face a key run with 13 games in January.”
Esworthy said the key was forcing the Spartans to shoot from the outside in the second half.
“It’s the civic center and it’s hard to shoot it in here,” Esworthy said.
Jim Justice disagreed over the depth perception in the larger venus versus a high school gym.
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Justice offered. “We just didn’t shoot well and we made poor decisions. Our ability to read the defense and get to the right spot wasn’t there tonight.”
Dominique Joyce followed Harris by scoring 15 points for PH.
Ward had a team-high 16 points for Greenbrier East, with Ezzedine netting 13 for the Spartans.
Bill Turner
