With an all new team from last year except for one player, the Northern Virginia Community College men’s basketball team could have been expected to start out slowly, but such was not the case. Its first two games saw NOVA almost break the century mark both times in winning.

Its first game on Nov. 3 saw NOVA pummel Montgomery Community College-Germantown by 96-68. On Nov. 9, the team traveled across the Bay Bridge and ran away from the Chesapeake Skipjacks 117-90, as neither team stopped running. Opening up 2-0, the future looked bright for NOVA.

Next, NOVA traveled on Nov. 15 to play the 2-0 Hagerstown Community College Hawks. Its scoring declined as it took a 72-86 loss.

Two days later it played at the No. 7 Junior College Division III team, the 5-0 Montgomery Community College-Rockville Knights. NOVA’s scoring took a further tumble as it dropped 57-70 after being behind by four at the half. NOVA’s record for the year thus fell to 2-2.

Then NOVA had an interesting match-up against the 3-0 ASA Avengers, a college in Brooklyn, NY. It was held Nov. 19 in Annandale’s Ernst Gym.

NOVA’s players appeared to be eager to take on the challenge of playing the big city team from New York, which included a 6-foot-11-inch center, Kevin Briggs. NOVA went out to an early 3-2 lead, causing a quick ASA timeout. ASA righted itself as it scored 12 straight points for a 14-3 lead.

With ASA up 31-18, NOVA scored 11 straight points, including two thunderous dunks by Cordero Holt, to close the gap to 29-31. NOVA battled the rest of the half, but ASA scored the last five points to lead at the half 45-36. Still, NOVA had gotten the feeling that they could keep up with this team.

ASA kept its big lead for the first four minutes of the second half, but then NOVA got hot as ASA seemed to lose its focus. With just over 12 minutes to go, NOVA had tied it at 54-54.

Despite missing a dunk, NOVA had the lead at 60-56, but ASA scored the next five for a 61-60 lead. With 5:10 to go, NOVA held its last lead at 62-61. Then its scoring almost stopped, as it made only one basket the rest of the way. In contrast, ASA’s 5-foot-9-inch freshman guard from Washington, D.C., Sa’Quan Davis, with his team leading 64-62, made a three-pointer, then a two-pointer between two minutes and one minute to go, to give his team the lead, 69-62. ASA went on to win, 71-64.

To show the power of ASA, the next afternoon they went to Montgomery CC to play the unbeaten team, and they beat them by 20 points.

Afterwards, Coach Mike Fitzmaurice showed displeasure with his team’s performance in its last three games.

“In the last three games we turned the ball over in games we should have won. We’ve got to work on that in practice. We need smart passes and to take care of the ball. We didn’t do it in the last five minutes of the game… It’s unfortunate. We let it get away. We tried,” said Fitzmaurice.

For NOVA, Westley Ford had 14, and both Dominique Goodwin and Tomas Camera had 12. Cordero had three dunks for six points, but missed several contested layups. Surprisingly, NOVA made only one three-pointer, at the beginning of the game.

NOVA traveled to Hampton, Va., for the Tidewater Storm Shootout the weekend of Nov. 20 and 21. They played well, beating the Community College of Baltimore County-Dundalk on Saturday, 91-70, and then almost upsetting Davidson County (N.C.) Community College on Sunday, 84-88.

Davidson was 8-0 at the time and was ranked No. 4 in the country among Division III basketball teams.

NOVA led by as many as 11 in the first half and led much of the game, shooting 45 percent from three-point range and making 70 percent of its foul shots. Davidson, however, shot 32 free throws to NOVA’s 20 for the game. Since then, Davidson has ascended to the No. 1 ranking.

Finally, on Nov. 30 at Annandale’s Ernst Center, NOVA played the St. Mary’s College (Md.) junior varsity team. NOVA played well in a few spots, which was more than enough to defeat St. Mary’s, 82-59.

St. Mary’s had only six players, and with foul-outs, was playing with only four players the last few minutes of the game. Holt led NOVA with 15 points, including two thundering dunks and two three-pointers. NOVA climbed back to .500 with the win at 4-4.

Though the team seems to be up and down in performance, it holds promise for the remainder of the schedule. Before the next semester begins, the team will play seven more games, including home games on Dec. 8 and another on Dec. 21.

By: Arch Scurlock

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