Majors Make Statement with First-Round Win

After spending the President’s Day holiday in school, cursing the fact that some snow days earlier in the year had nullified what should have been a day off, Juwan Bullard carried his grievance onto the basketball court.

Playing like a young man who just had to go to school on a holiday, Bullard bested his season-high before halftime, and ended up scoring 29 points, as Mount Vernon dismantled Fairfax 77-63 in the first round of the Northern Region tournament.

The win puts the Majors into the second round of the tournament against Annandale.

“Looking at the team we had coming into this year, we’re ecstatic to be where we are,” said coach Alfonso Smith after the game. “The reality is that we’ve had to fit a lot of new pieces into the puzzle this year.”

The Majors took command of the game at the outset, building a 16-4 lead before the crowd has a chance to begin munching on its popcorn. Early on, Fairfax was keying on first team All-District standout Jesse Konadu, who averages 21 points per game, and so Bullard was finding himself with plenty of open looks.

“I was attacking the basket strong, like coach told me,” Bullard said after the game. “I wasn’t thinking, I was just going. You have to step it up in the playoffs.”

But after Mount Vernon’s sizzling start, Fairfax started to settle down, and sophomore guard Zach Burnett (16 points), and senior Turkel Anwar (15 points) started dialing up their outside shots, with Burnett scoring 12 points in the first half, and Anwar 10. Burnett nailed a 3-pointer with just less than three minutes to play in the first half, to bring his team to within one, but Bullard went on a rampage in the closing minute of the half, scoring seven points to extend his team’s lead back to eight at the half.

In the second half, Fairfax watched Bullard more closely, but allowed his partner in crime, Konadu (24 points, eight rebounds, eight assists) to run wild. Konadu directed his team masterfully, running the court effortlessly and making his offense flow like a well-oiled machine. The lead grew to 21 points with just fewer than three minutes to play, and while Fairfax made up some ground near the end, the result was never in doubt.

“Konadu did a good job of letting things come to him,” Smith said after the game. “I was proud of him because he got Juwan some easy baskets. When he does that, he enlarges his teammates. Any great player, they have to make the players around them look like superman, and he did that tonight.”

Mount Vernon lost in the semifinal of the regional tournament each of the last two years, last year to Chantilly and the year before to Hayfield, but this year they feel like they have the horses to go all the way.

“This is our year, this is it,” Bullard said, beaming after a career best night. “Right now, the way our confidence is, we are the team to beat, until somebody shows us otherwise, it’s us.”

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