After defeating South Lakes for the fifth time in six tries during his varsity career, Madison senior Bo Kuhblank said, “Yes,” the Warhawks are inside the senior-led Seahawks players’ heads.
With 42 seconds left in a tie game, Kuhblank canned an open three-pointer to provide the deciding margin in a 56-53 win in Reston. South Lakes had three shots over two possessions in the closing moments, but couldn’t score.
The win gave 15th-ranked Madison (12-3, 4-0 in the Concorde) sole possession of first place in the district. The No. 9 Seahawks slipped to 12-2, 3-1.
“The shot just came to me in the flow of the offense; we kept swinging the ball, and I was open,” Kuhblank said.
South Lakes, which last year had its season end in the playoffs with a loss to Madison, trailed by 13 in the first half before rallying to take a 51-48 lead with 3:51 left in the game.
The fourth quarter featured two ties and five lead changes as well as the Warhawks’ tenth of 11 three-pointers in the game when Colin Sullender tied the game 51-51 with 1:40 to play.
“We’ve got five or six guys who can really shoot the three,” Kuhblank said. “On any given night, any of them can get hot.”
Sullender finished with 18 points, Andrew Gorkowski added 13 and Joseph Chalabi had 10.
Seahawks senior guard Kyle Tang said his team didn’t stick to its gameplan. “They shot threes, and they made them,” Tang said. “That’s what they do. And they ran their half-court sets better than we did. They got baskets inside. We’ve still got something to prove to them. We’ll have to get them next time.”
South Lakes’ coach Mike Desmond said the plan was to make them shoot twos. “Hats off to Madison,” Desmond said. “We can beat them if our players execute our game plan. They made threes and we missed free throws.”
The Seahawks were four for 10 from the foul line. Madison made six out of seven.
An intense game played with a high level of do-or-die spirit throughout, South Lakes aggressively defended, but bit hard on most of the Warhawks’ shot fakes. That helped Madison to create shots from various spots on the floor and limit turnovers as the lunging Seahawks ended up out of defensive position.
Chalabi’s three late in the first quarter gave his team a 14-12 lead after the first quarter.
Defensively, Madison deflected passes during many Seahawks possessions, which led to South Lakes settling for unsuccessful three-pointers against a 2-3 zone defense. The lead grew to 32-19.
South Lakes’ Aiden Billings (team-high 10 points) kept his team in the game by scoring 10 consecutive points during Madison’s charge. However, the Seahawks trailed 36-26 at the half.
In the second half, a couple of steals led to rare fast-break baskets as South Lakes chipped away at its deficit to close to within three points after three quarters.
Sam Cooley gave the Seahawks their biggest lead with less than four minutes to play, but Sullender’s three-pointer tied it moments later.
That led to a most interesting sequence late in the game. Tang next chose to pull the ball out against the zone and dribbled two minutes off the clock without interruption. When Madison engaged defensively, South Lakes failed on its three-point shot with 1:40 left.
“When they pulled the ball out, we didn’t panic,” Kuhblank said. “We knew that our game plan going in was good and we stuck to it. At halftime, our coach told us [South Lakes] would probably make two runs – a big one and a small one – and they did. But we stayed [composed].”
–Paul Bergeron
@PaulBergeron3
Well-written article. Game analysis spot on. Moved out of the area so appreciate your keeping me up on local Vienna sports. Continue the great work!
Former head basketball coach at Madison. As a matter of fact, two of the assistants were former players. I enjoyed your spot on, well written article. Just like I was there. Now living in Hawaii since
2015.