By Andy States
COLLEGE PARK – Having enjoyed a sizeable lead over the Patterson Clippers throughout the bulk of Saturday night’s 4A championship game at Comcast Center, North Point coach Jimmy Ball could have easily hit the panic button as he watched the Baltimore City power mount a furious fourth-quarter rally against his Eagles.
Patterson, which trailed by double digits for much of the game, reeled off a 19-6 run to turn what had been a 10-point deficit into a three point lead with under three minutes to play. But there was no panic in Ball, or his Eagles.
“I knew we were going to come back,” he said. “I knew we were going to get a score and a stop.”
Ball’s intuitions proved correct, as North Point closed the game on an 11-4 run to knock off Patterson and its sophomore sensation Aquille Carr by a 76-72 count for the 4A title. The win marked not only the first boys basketball state championship for North Point (27-0), which just capped its fourth year as a varsity program, but also was the first for a Southern Maryland Athletic Conference (SMAC) school since 1972.
“We’ve preached team and family all year,” Ball said. “Every time a meeting’s done, we say family. Our players believe that. This is a moment I will never, ever, ever forget.
“To win a state championship, I’m from Charles County. I’m from La Plata. I went to La Plata High School. I chased the dream, too. I chased it when I was [coaching] at Westlake. I got the opportunity to come to North Point, and in four years we have it.”
North Point’s defense set the early tone, making life relatively difficult for Carr, who averaged 32 points per game this season and commanded most of the pre-game spotlight. But the Eagles harassed the Patterson (25-2) star into a nine of 32 shooting night from the floor.
“Everybody was telling me about him, they’d seen him on YouTube,” North Point’s sophomore point guard Marquis Wright said. “He could dunk and stuff. It didn’t faze me because I knew we had a team, not one person that’s going to score all the points. I told my team, ‘We got this.’”
Added senior Gerel Simmons, who was tasked with guarding Carr for much of the night: “We just knew we had each other’s backs. If he got past one of us another teammate was right there to help us. We had to contain him.”
While Carr finished with a game-high 27 points and led the Clippers’ fourth-quarter comeback, the Eagles were confident entering the game that their depth made them far more dangerous.
“I got so many calls about how to stop [Carr],” Ball said. “We have a team. We have five guys, six guys, seven guys, eight guys that can come in anytime. We really only concentrated on stopping two. They had to stop five. I look at the stats and we have three guys in double figures and one at nine.”
Sophomore Naim Muhammad led North Point with 20 points and hauled in 11 rebounds. Simmons scored 19 points and made four free throws in the final two minutes to help ice the game. Senior Devonte Thomas, who became the first 1,000-point scorer in North Point’s brief history during the season, added 10 points, while Wright scored nine and dished out 12 assists.
Earlier in the week at the pre-tournament media luncheon, Ball found a little extra motivation to spur his squad to a strong showing when the state tournament finally commenced.
“The week didn’t start out good for us,” he said. “On Tuesday, I didn’t have one media talk to me. I took that to heart. I took that as disrespectful and told our kids that.”
For Patterson, the loss serves as the only shortcoming against a Maryland opponent all season. The Clippers dropped a one-point decision to Benjamin Cardoza (NY) on Jan. 15, but ran past every other team on its slate, including Milford Mill, Digital Harbor and Dunbar – the respective Maryland 3A, 2A and 1A state champs.
“I just thought we didn’t play well,” Patterson coach Harry Martin said. “That’s a combination of us not playing well and North Point playing well.
“Without a doubt, they played a great game and we give them a lot of credit.”
Though Carr finished with a flurry, he did not feel he had the impact on the game that he had hoped for.
“I played my hardest, but I really didn’t give my all,” he said, “because I couldn’t do much. That’s a credit to their defense.”
Just four years in, North Point successfully wrote a different ending to the script that every Charles County and SMAC program has followed for the past 39 years. But in the post-game glow, Ball knew that meant there would be a change starting next year, too.
“Everyone’s coming after us now,” he said. “We’re not at well-kept secret now.”
North Point 76, Patterson 72
N 17 14 22 23
P 13 10 22 27
N: Muhammad 20, Simmons 19, Thomas 10, Wright 9, Mouton 6, Bonds 6, Mack 4, Reid 2
P: Carr 27, Fowlkes 16, Goines 9, Meekins 7, Williams 6, Woodard 5, Carter 2
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