Griffin, Harrington combine for 57 in Herndon win

There are a number of dynamic scoring pairs around the region, but very few can fill it up quite like Herndon seniors Liam Harrington and Michael Griffin. On Wednesday night against Hylton, Griffin buried six three-pointers on his way to 28 points and Harrington scored a career-high 29 to lead their team to a 79-75 home victory.

Griffin is now averaging 24.5 ppg on the season after his third 25-point or more performance this year. He’s been known as a prolific shooter for a while, leading the Hornets in scoring last year as well. Harrington is a different matter. Less of a three-point shooter than Griffin and more of a point guard, he’s “only” scored 20 points seven prior times in his career. He’s had a great week, pushing his previous career high in an overtime win over Potomac Falls on Tuesday night before establishing a new high the following night.

“I’m feeling confident in my shot,” Harrington said after the game. “I’ve been working on it every single morning before school and after practice. I’m putting in the work.”

It appears as if his entire team may be putting in the work. The Hornets (3-3) have now won three of their last four under first-year coach Josh Headen. They started out fast against the Bulldogs (2-4), who brought leading scorers Dwayne Hill and Marcus Stephens off the bench instead of starting them. Griffin hit three of his three-pointers early to help give Herndon a 14-5 lead, and the Hornets played solid defense to lead after one quarter, 20-11.

Herndon was generally able to sustain almost a double-digit lead until the third quarter, when Hylton started to claw back. Down nine early in the second half, Hylton senior Ryan Sanders stole the ball from Griffin and took it in for a lay-up. Then, Bulldog senior Joshua Jones stole the ball from Harrington to do the same. After another Hylton defensive stop and a Hill bucket, suddenly the Bulldogs only trailed 37-34 with 5:35 left in the third.

The Hornets stopped the bleeding and got the lead back up to five as the quarter was drawing to a close, but the Bulldogs’ Stephens drained a 35-footer as the buzzer sounded to draw Hylton to within two. Sanders scored off a put-back a few minutes later to tie the score at 52 early in the fourth. It was then that Herndon put it in high gear.

While Harrington and Griffin continued to produce, the Hornets also ran much better offense as a team, scoring on backdoor cuts and sharing the ball effectively. The results were shown in the final box score as five Hornets finished with three assists or more, senior David Gabbay leading the way with six. The Bulldogs, who managed to draw closer in the third quarter by forcing turnovers, now had trouble protecting the ball themselves.

“We need to take care of the ball better,” Hylton coach Barry Smith said after the game. “Our point guard [William Norwood] broke his thumb last night, so we were missing him, but we just have to be better with the ball. I think we cut it to two late and had three straight possessions where we turned the ball over. The effort was there–we just didn’t capitalize.”

Hylton is a young team that lost a lot from last year’s team that made it to states. The Bulldogs are 2-4, but they’ve lost all their games by less than seven points so far this year and will no doubt be extremely dangerous by year’s end, if they aren’t already. Herndon, meanwhile, with ten seniors on the roster right now may be ready to go on a winning streak.

“Our schedule was really hard to start the year. That’s going to pay off at the end,” said Harrington. “We’re gelling more–at the start of the year everybody was kind of doing their own thing but now everyone knows the rules. We’re getting a lot better as a team.”

–Chris Jollay

box score is unofficial