By Jacob Bogage:
Sherwood Warriors 83- Perry Hall Gators 75
MPSSAA 4A North Divisional Playoff
As the clocked ticked down on the Sherwood Warriors’ (16-7) opening round playoff-win, the Perry Hall Gators (Baltimore County) had to foul someone to stop the clock. They found Sherwood’s Charlie Rogers.
The senior Rogers hit three of his four final free throws to lead all Sherwood scorers with 23 points and send the Warriors to Baltimore February 28 to face Southwestern in the Regional Quarter-Finals.
Sherwood’s big three of Rogers, Scott Bolen and Jourdain McCants carried the Warriors on this night, scoring 58 of the team’s 85 points. Bolen contributed 22 and McCants 13.
“It’s that time of year. My big three gotta bring it or we’re going home early,” said Sherwood head coach Dondrell Whitmore.“It’s a long season, but now it’s time to bring ‘em out. They gotta play and produce for us.”
Early on, the Warriors had no problem producing. They opened up the contest on a 20-4 run spear courtesy of Bolen’s 13 points in the quarter. His last bucket in the period gave him 1,000 career varsity points and came off a perfectly thrown alley-oop pass from Rogers who added 7 points in the frame as well.
“I told Charlie before the game I was going to get 1,000 before the first quarter and I was luckily hitting my shots and I got my opportunities because these teams don’t know me as well so they’re not sending tons of defenders and I tried to take advantage of that,” said Bolen. “I got what I needed.”
But Perry Hall, led by Tyler White’s 29 points, slowly but surely cut the deficit, until with 1:30 left in the third quarter and Bolen on the bench with four fouls, T.J. Winn’s (10 points) layup on the break gave the Gators their first and lead of the night, 57-56. Joey DeStefano (18 points) hit a jumper to return the lead to Sherwood, and the lead went back and forth for the remainder of the period until Bolen re-entered in the fourth.
“I’m impressed with the win,” said Whitmore. “We came out thinking we could play a little zone and tight defense, but I guess we wore ourselves out, then we were able to make a lot of big shots down the stretch.”
Whitmore went to his bench extremely infrequently during the final quarter as the big three plus DeStefano outscored the entirety of the Gator lineup in the stanza 21-17.
“Sometimes you get certain guys in a rhythm and it’s hard to take them out,” Whitmore said. “You gotta keep what’s working.”