Norcom boys basketball keeps winning, DeMatha looms

Norcom (Portsmouth, Va.) (17-0), ranked No. 5 in the MaxPreps Xcellent 25 boys basketball rankings sponsored by the Army National Guard, remained undefeated with wins over Maury (73-60) and Granby (76-56) last week.

Virginia Tech-bound Dorian Finney-Smith scored 22 points against Maury and had a game-high 32 in the win against Granby. Decarlos Anderson nailed four 3-pointers to finish with a game-high 22 points against Maury and chipped in 21 against Granby.

The Greyhounds take on Booker T. Washington (4-5, 4-2) on Friday and then host powerhouse DeMatha (13-3, 6-1) Saturday in a nonleague game. The Staggs, after being humbled by No. 2 St. Anthony 75-25 last week, split a pair of games over the weekend.

DeMatha (Hyattsville, Md.), which dropped out of the MaxPreps Xcellent 25 for the first time this season, escaped with a narrow 68-64 win over Archbishop Carroll on Friday night. Beejay Anya led the Staggs with 24 points, while Kemy Osse had a game-high 24 for Carroll.

On Sunday night, Bishop O'Connell (Arlington, Va.) sophomore guard Will Ferguson scored a team-high 20 points and Brad Hunt chipped in with 11 and grabbed 15 rebounds in a 61-58 win over DeMatha. It was Hunt's two free throws with 10 seconds remaining that sealed the victory.

HENRICO GIRLS GET REVENGE
It wasn't pretty. But then again, most games between heated rivals aren't.

Henrico (Richmond, Va.) and Highland Springs (Va.) had a combined 52 turnovers in their Capital District matchup Friday night, but when the final buzzer sounded it was Henrico pulling out a hard-fought 56-51 victory to avenge an early-season loss to its longtime rival.

Henrico (11-3, 6-1) shot a horrid 4-for-22 and had 17 turnovers in the first half, including six straight in the second quarter to trail 21-18 at the half. But the Warriors came out of the locker room and continued to chip away, scoring on four straight possessions to take a 37-36 lead into the fourth quarter.

Henrico extended its lead to 45-36, but the Springers battled back to tie the game at 49 with just less than two minutes remaining.

Henrico took over from there. Ashl'e Freeman converted a layup to put the Warriors up by two, and then after failing to convert on their next trip down the court the Springers were forced to foul. The Warriors made them pay, converting on three of five shots from the charity stripe to put the game away.



"The kids listened, they played hard, they withstood the battle," Henrico coach Jean Adkins, whose team lost to Highland Springs 76-63 on Dec. 11, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. "We kept our head in it. I know what my kids are capable of doing, and at the crucial time of the game, I expect them to do it."

Freeman led all scorers with 17 points, while Jazzmin Dabney and Kermisha Clark each had 12 for Highland Springs (14-3, 7-2).

BALANCED ATTACK PAYS OFF FOR SANFORD                                                                                     Delaware's top boys team added another Philadelphia school to its list of victims as the Sanford (Hockessin, Del.) Warriors kicked off the Kobe Bryant Classic at Philadelphia University with a solid 60-45 win over Germantown Academy.

Sanford (10-0) once again was led by its trio of playmakers. Syracuse-bound Trevor Cooney, who sat out the last three games nursing a sprained ankle, poured in a game-high 17 points, including 3-pointers at the first-quarter buzzer and with three seconds left in the first half. Deon Jones (10 rebounds) and Khallid Hart each chipped in with 15.

"Yesterday's win was another big step for our team and our program," said Sanford coach Stan Waterman, whose Warriors also have defeated Philly schools Westtown, Archbishop Carroll and Chester. "It was a quality win against another quality program that has tradition and a reputation of being very good. These games will help us continue to improve as we gear up for state tournament play, but it also helps to establish our team and the quality of basketball in the state of Delaware as being on par with some of the recognizable names in the region.

"As for our team, we continue to have good scoring balance. We are playing pretty well together, sharing the ball, and being unselfish. These guys (Cooney, Jones, Hart, Austin Ford) are all capable of scoring 20-plus per contest, but they are beginning to understand how difficult it is for our opponents to defend us when we have that balance."



After playing locally at Wilmington Friends on Tuesday, Sanford will travel Saturday to take on Plymouth Whitemarsh (Pa.) at the Prime Time Shootout.

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STAT OF THE STARS                                                                                                                                 McNamara (D.C.) senior Marcus Thornton led all scorers with 34 points in leading his team to a 75-61 win over O'Connell in a Washington Catholic Athletic Conference win Friday night.

RECRUITING NEWS
Maury (Norfolk, Va.) junior Jamal Ferguson has committed to play college basketball at Marquette. Ferguson, a 6-foot-4 guard, had offers from Georgetown, Virginia Tech, Texas A&M and Old Dominion.

THE BUZZ
The University of Delaware announced it is discontinuing its mens varsity track and field and cross country programs at the end of this season — they will be re-classified as club sports — claiming the move is necessary to meet Title IX requirements. The jury is still out on whether or not that reason is legitimate, but regardless, the decision has been made and the local track and field community is up in arms.

While from afar it might seem as if this will only affect the program's current student-athletes — who are among the top students academically in the athletic department — the reality is that the majority of Delaware high school coaches in those two sports are products of UD coach Jim Fischer's program.

"Many of us [high school coaches] are involved in coaching today because of the powerful experience we had as track athletes while running for the University of Delaware and coach Jim Fischer," says Tatnall coach Pat Castagno, who was a captain on Delaware teams in the mid 1980s. "Today, many Delaware high school track and cross country coaches ran for coach Fischer and had such an incredible experience that they wanted to continue in the sport and got involved in coaching. Over the past 25 years this influx of UD running alumni into the local high school coaching ranks has fueled an upswing in the level and depth of high school performances as well as an increase in participation in high school track and cross country. These current runners are the future cross country and track coaches of our local high schools.

"The demise of the men's running program will surely have a ripple effect throughout the entire state of Delaware, including a major hit to the future high school track and cross country programs in our area."

I know firsthand from my years at UD as a student and since then as a volunteer in the youth sports community, you won't find a better, more committed person in the world of sports than Fischer, whose 29-year tenure at Delaware is second only to lacrosse coach Bob Shillinglaw (33 years).

Throughout his career Fischer has taken underachieving athletes and coached them to their full potential, never taking the credit he deserved for doing so. In addition, for years he has opened up the UD track to the community on Tuesday evenings and volunteered to lend his advice to local runners, from aspiring marathoners to those just taking their first lap. And I can't remember the last Special Olympics track meet that was run without him at the finish line, holding a stopwatch, blending in with the other officials as if he was a lay volunteer off the street.

But I digress ...

Fischer wouldn't want me talking about him in this column space. That's the kind of man he is. Instead, I'll reiterate how the sport might suffer at the high school level around the state in the future; not because of a lack of talented coaches right now, but because there will no longer be a training ground at UD for the future ones.

The University of Delaware athletic program will survive, just as it did in 1991 when it dropped wrestling, another popular Delaware high school sport.

But only time will tell if the high school track and field and cross country programs will survive once the current coaches head into retirement. I can tell you this, if there's a way Jim Fischer can help the programs survive, he will. It's the kind of person he is.



The University can strip the athletic department of the program and Fischer of his duties as its coach, but what they can never take away is his commitment to the sport and the athletes he has coached, many whom now are ambassadors at the high school level.

Time will tell what the future holds for the track and field and cross country teams at the high schools in the First State. But for 29 years, Fischer has made sure they've flourished.

But I digress ...

Jon Buzby is the sports columnist for the Newark Post, a freelance writer, and on the broadcast team for the 1290AM The Ticket High School Football and Basketball Games of the Week. You can reach him at jonbuzby@hotmail.com.