Titans Undone by Shooting Woes

RICHMOND — Despite all its athleticism and stifling defense, T.C. Williams has gone through prolonged droughts on the offensive end at times this season. That ugly tendency resurfaced to haunt the Titans Wednesday in their AAA state semifinal game against L.C. Bird (Chesterfield) at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Siegel Center.

The Titans scored just nine points in the final 11:39 of regulation and shot a woeful 26.7 percent from the floor after halftime, losing to the Skyhawks 60-54 in overtime.

“Tonight was just one of those nights,” T.C. Williams coach Julian King said. “What’s been happening all year long, our bad shooting caught up with us, and it just wasn’t our night.”

Early on, it looked like it was going to be nothing but the Titans’ night. They scored the first eight points of the game and held that same advantage, 32-24, at halftime. After Jamal Pullen made 1-of-2 free throws with 3:39 remaining in the third quarter, T.C. Williams enjoyed an 11-point lead at 39-28.

But then L.C. Bird got hot. The Skyhawks scored the next eight points and went on a 14-3 run behind Christian Smith and Harvey Freeman to tie the game with 6:08 left in the fourth quarter. The Skyhawks finally took their first lead with 2:44 left when Smith made a free throw to put his team ahead 45-44.

“We stopped scoring and we couldn’t get stops,” King said of the pivotal stretch that got L.C. Bird back in the game.

“I think we kind of just slacked off and didn’t play with the same kind of intensity we had in the first half,” said guard Tyrell Sitton. “We just kind of felt comfortable and didn’t play with the same intensity.”

After Rick Mathews answered with a bucket at the other end for T.C. Williams, Javonte Reddick buried a 3 out of the corner, his first field goal of the night, giving the Skyhawks a 48-46 lead with a shade less than 50 seconds remaining.

Sitton drove the lane on the Titans' next possession and dished it off to Pullen, who drew a foul. The senior calmly stepped to the line and made both free throws to tie the game. The Titans got a stop and a decent look as time expired, but Daquan Kerman’s running attempt was off the mark, and the game went to overtime.

In the extra period, Reddick got the Skyhawks on the board first with another 3-pointer, and the Titans would never again draw even. The teams traded buckets over the next minute and change, but a 3-pointer by Robert Johnson with 1:26 left gave the Skyhawks a 58-52 lead that would prove insurmountable.

“We ran across a team that was just as scrappy as we are and probably a lot more talented offensively than we are, and they got on a roll with a couple of shots and it was hard to come back," King said.

“We’ve run across a couple junk defenses that have stifled us at times, but we’ve been shooting a poor percentage all year long, so this is nothing new,” King said.

T.C. Williams shot just 35.5 percent for the game and made only 1-of-8 shots from behind the arc. Christian Smith of L.C. Bird was undoubtedly the player of the game, as he went for a game-high 23 points and 14 rebounds.

Sitton and Pullen led the Titans with 11 points each, and Pullen also had eight rebounds. Landon Moss and T.J. Huggins each added seven.

While the faces of the players and King told the story after the Titans’ loss, it doesn’t change the fact that they had a fantastic season after forfeiting 15 games last year due to using ineligible players.

“I can’t take away the pain with words, but in time you will realize we had a great season,” King said of what he told his players. “We accomplished something a lot of people didn’t expect us to do, coming back, basically, from the dead. We lost to a really good team, the better team for that night, so there’s nothing for those guys to hang their heads on.”

Jamal Pullen put it more simply.

“We just stayed together after all that stuff happened, we just stayed as a team," he said. "We didn’t want anything to let us go back like last year. We just stayed together the whole year.”