By Arch Scurlock

Sports Columnist

The Northern Virginia Community College men’s basketball team continued its strong recent performances, winning eight of its last 10 games, including all seven of its Virginia Community College System games. The VCCS wins included beating its top two VCCS competitors a total of three times.

The second of those VCCS games against the top two competitors was at the Annandale campus on Feb. 4 against archrival Southside Virginia Community College. Both teams came in with unblemished VCCS records: NOVA at 5-0 and Southside at 4-0.

In the first half, NOVA streaked out to a 6-0 lead, but Southside rallied to take a 19-13 lead. NOVA then scored 11 in a row to take a 5-point lead and stretched it to as many as 13 points at 38-25 with about four minutes to play. Southside then again rallied, but NOVA held a 40-33 halftime lead.

Simon Kilday led NOVA in the first half with 14, followed by Duncan Jones with 12.

The second half saw a resurgent Southside waste no time in taking the lead as it scored 8 straight points to go up 41-40 before NOVA scored its first point. The score remained close until the 10-minute mark, when Southside extended its lead from 60-57 to 66-59 over two minutes.

NOVA took up the challenge and, behind Kilday’s 4 points and Jones’ 4 points, came back to take the lead at 71-70 with under five minutes to play. Southside regained the lead momentarily at 74-73 with less than three minutes to play. Then NOVA scored 10 of the game’s next 11 points to go up 83-75 with 23.7 seconds left on the way to an 84-77 win.

Duncan Jones led NOVA scoring with 27 points, followed by Kilday’s 22 and Chris Jones’ 12. With the win, NOVA went to 6-0 in the VCCS and 9-9 overall.

Overall, Coach Mike Fitzmaurice was happy with the game.

“That was a big win for us because we were undefeated in conference, as was Southside,” he said. “We played well for most of the game, and then we had stretches where we played very poorly, defensively, [didn’t] take care of the basketball. Fortunately, that was only about… 5 percent of the game. We don’t really have the depth or the size that we normally have, so we have to play better basketball… I’d say we got an A, A-, B+.  Overall we’re really happy to win… [Southside will] probably be our most formidable competitor at the season-end [tournament].”

NOVA played at home on Feb. 11 against its other chief VCCS competitor, Tidewater Community College. Tidewater came in with an 8-1 VCCS record — the only loss being to NOVA — and a 14-7 overall record. NOVA easily broke Tidewater’s early press, getting behind it for easy baskets, and Tidewater was flat in the first half. NOVA went out to as much as a 17-point lead, and led 44-30 at halftime. Duncan Jones led the charge with 14 points, and Steve Pierre had 11.

Toward the middle of the second half, Tidewater began cutting into the NOVA lead and, with 10.5 minutes to go, had cut the lead to 57-53.

In a quick reversal of momentum and a 15-4 run, with Kilday making 9 of those, NOVA extended its lead to 72-57 with just under five minutes to play. It looked like the game was over.

Then the late-game fun began. NOVA held what seemed like a comfortable 10-point lead at 76-66 with 1:46 to go. Then Tidewater’s Eric Dubose netted two 3-pointers sandwiched around a NOVA 2-point basket to cut the lead to 78-72 with about a minute to go. Two foul shots by  Kilday upped the lead back to 80-72 at the 46.9 second mark, but Tidewater closed it to 80-74 at the 31.9 second mark with a 2-point basket. A foul on Duncan Jones gave Tidewater the ball back, and they scored at the 24-second mark to close to 80-76.

Chris Jones was then quickly fouled and he made one of two shots to make it 81-76 with 21.5 seconds left. Another Tidewater 2-pointer at 16 seconds to go made it a 3-point game, 81-78.

At 9.2 seconds, Pierre was fouled and made one of two to make it 82-78. Tidewater rushed down and threw up another good 3-pointer to make it 82-81 with 2.2 seconds remaining.

Tidewater quickly fouled Duncan Jones at 1.3 seconds, but he made both foul shots, and Tidewater was not able to retaliate as NOVA barely escaped with an 84-81 win, despite being outscored 51-40 in the second half.

NOVA thus remained undefeated and at the top of the VCCS standings with a 7-0 record, 10-10 overall.

NOVA was led in the game by Kilday’s 23 points, including six of six free throws, and Duncan Jones’ 22 points, including 8 of 9 from the free-throw line.

Assistant Coach Sean Fitzmaurice remarked after the game, “We got a big lead, then we let them back in the game. If we play the right way, make the right passes, we’ll be very successful.”

In regards to losing the big lead late in the second half, he said, “We did the same thing in the first half–had a double-digit lead, then let them back in. We seem to play in spurts.” Compared to the game they played against Tidewater there earlier in the year, Fitzmaurice said, “We were in the lead [for the first game] the whole way. We had a double-digit lead the first half. At the end of the second half, they started hitting threes and tied it up. We wound up winning by five — a carbon copy of this game.”

On Jan. 22 in Hampton, NOVA defeated Thomas Nelson Community College 82-64.

On the 26th, NOVA traveled to Largo, Md., and was beaten by Prince George’s Community College 76-63.

Another road game on Jan. 28 saw NOVA defeat VCCS rival Richard Bland College 88-76.

After the Southside game at Annandale, NOVA entertained a powerful Hagerstown Community College team on Feb. 9 at Annandale, which came in with a 21-4 record. NOVA kept up with Hagerstown the first 11 minutes of the game, but fell behind 59-47 at the half.  NOVA and Hagerstown played fairly evenly in the second half, but NOVA could never cut its deficit by much. It wound up losing 107-91, similar to its loss to Hagerstown in the first game of the year.

Despite the loss, Guard Yusuf Ansray came off the bench in that game for NOVA in the first half and had a super game. He hit his first 3-pointers in that half to keep NOVA in the game and wound up with 22 points in leading NOVA in scoring.

Theo Spaulding added 20 for NOVA and Pierre 17.

After the Tidewater game, NOVA journeyed to Maryland on Feb. 15 to take on Montgomery College-Takoma Park. NOVA played an impressive game, shooting well and playing a solid defense. Leading 19-18 in the first half, NOVA went out to as much as a 13-point lead and led 46-39 at the half. NOVA had strong 3-point shooting, making eight in the first half, led by Pierre’s three.

In the second half, Montgomery was not able to make a big dent in the NOVA lead, and the Montgomery crowd even cheered NOVA for some nifty quick passing that led to some easy baskets. Pierre’s terrific game of 35 points easily paced NOVA to the 91-75 win. It included five 3-point baskets and 10 2-point baskets. Duncan Jones added 20, and NOVA had five players in double figures.

In the last game of this group, NOVA traveled to Front Royal on Feb. 18 to meet VCCS rival Lord Fairfax Community College. NOVA could not duplicate its 124 points scored against Lord Fairfax at a previous game in Annandale but still routed them 90-49. This visit also included the re-emergence of the women’s team, after several postponed games due to a lack of able players, who easily beat the Lord Fairfax women.

With the win against Lord Fairfax, NOVA’s record rose to 8-0 in the VCCS, 12-10 overall.

NOVA plays three more regular season games, all against VCCS foes, including a Feb. 26 trip to Southside for the final game, before going to the season-ending VCCS tournament in Chesapeake on March 1.

By: Arch Scurlock

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