Closely guarded NOVA player strains for basket against Anne Arundel CC.

On Saturday afternoon, January 23rd, the NOVA men’s basketball team journeyed down I-95 to Fredericksburg to play Germanna Community College before a smattering of fans in a VCCS game.

It appeared early that it was going to be an easy game for NOVA, as it streaked out to 13-2 and 19-6 leads. Germanna did not give up.Outscoring NOVA 21-2,it took a 27-21 lead as NOVA often wound up with only one or no shots on its possessions.

Down 33-26, NOVA finally called for a time out. It helped momentarily, as Jamal Jones and Malik N’Garmin scored eight straight points putting NOVA up 34-33 with about four minutes to play. Germanna later led by 43-40, but NOVA scored the last five points of the half for a 45-43 lead. Jamal Jones excelled, scoring 22 points.

With about 15-minutes remaining in the second half, Germanna pulled even at 55-55 and slowly began to pull away from NOVA. NOVA fell behind 70-61 with about eight minutes to go, cut the lead to five, but then fell behind by ten at 77-67 with five minutes to go.

NOVA then came out of a time out in a rush as Joe Scorah, Jamal Jones, and Jemal Fair scored 10 of 12 points to quickly cut the lead to 79-77 with 3 ½ minutes to go.

Germanna pushed its lead back to five at 83-78 with two minutes to go. Fair made a three pointer to cut the deficit to two for NOVA and Jones later cut the lead again to two with 30 seconds to go, but Germanna held on for an 87-83 victory, much to the jubilation of the Germanna fans and team.

The game itself had a casual or “loose” quality about it. One of the referees particularly seemed to enjoy the game, answering fans’ complaints occasionally and bantering and talking with fans during stoppages in play. Time keeping seemed to be a new duty for the scorers’ table, though there seemed to be no concerted effort to favor the home team. The 35-second play time keeper seldom started the clock correctly. Several stoppages in play resulted in to resetting the game clock. When it wasn’t starting at the beginning of the second half and Germanna had had the ball for about ten seconds, the officials decided to restart the second half back to the beginning. All of this action seemed appropriate for the cozy gym at the Bragg Family Center. Such a situation is probably not unusual in the big time atmosphere of community college sports, though you would probably not find it in even small high school games.

Jamal Jones ended up with a super game for NOVA, scoring 40 points. Jemal Fair and Malik N’Garmin both had 12, Joe Scorah had 8, Howard Lyles had 6, Brandon Allen 4, and Dion Romero canned a free throw.

With the loss, NOVA fell to 3-2 in the VCCS and to .500 for the year at 9-9. Germanna won only its third game of the year versus seven losses.
On Monday night, January 25th, NOVA played its rescheduled game with the Anne Arundel Community College Pioneers in Annandale.
Most of the first half was marked by excitement, and even play between the two teams, with NOVA leading 26-25 with about six minutes to play. NOVA then went on a hot streak, outscoring Arundel 16 to 7 to lead at halftime 42-32.

The even play for the first half indicated that the game would get tighter in the second half, and when it did, NOVA’s scorers went quiet. Anne Arundel scored 8 of the first 12 points to cut the NOVA lead to 46-40 with about 15 minutes to go. With 10 minutes left, the NOVA lead was only 54-51, and Anne Arundel took its first lead at 55-54 with nine minutes to go. From there, Anne Arundel went on to its 72-66 win. Only four NOVA players scored in the second half: Allen scored 18, followed by Jones with 13 and N’Garmin with 10. Other NOVA scorers included Chris Barlow with 9, Lyles 7, Smith 3, and Fair and Sheng-yuan Wang, a new team member, with 2 each.

Kevin Hunt led all scorers with 20 for Arundel, with Clyde Gross and Chris Dunn adding 13 each and Kevin Coates 10.
With its second straight loss, NOVA fell to 9-10 for the year while Anne Arundel advanced to 11-5.

With the men’s and women’s basketball teams’ trip to Tidewater postponed due to snow over the January 30th-31st weekend, the men’s team next scheduled game was not until February 10th at Annandale versus the Baltimore City Community College. With its last four games cancelled/postponed, the NOVA women’s next game was scheduled for February 8th versus Montgomery College-Rockville in Rockville.

By: Arch Scurlock

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