Gaithersburg Boys Advance to Quarterfinals

The Gaithersburg boys basketball team advanced to the 4A West Regional Quarterfinals Friday night after defeating Bethesda-Chevy Chase 54-42.

The win was hard-fought, however, especially in light of how the Trojans performed in the first quarter. The team scored four 3-pointers to build an early 20-13 first-quarter lead, uncharacteristic for a team known more for its solid defense and less for its ability to rack up points quickly.

"I thought one of the biggest keys for us tonight was starting the game quickly," head coach Kevin Parrish said. In the last five games, the Trojans had been behind in the first quarter even though they won, he said.

BCC quickly put a stop to Gaithersburg's momentum in the second quarter. The team tightened up its defense, and began an aggressive full-court press in the second quarter that Parrish said surprised his players.

"When we watched them on tape, we knew they were going to run a 1-2-2 full-court pressure, but they ran it much more aggressively tonight than they had in the games that we had watched," Parrish said.

The BCC's increased pressure on defense was only part of the problem in the second quarter: the Trojans were taking some good, open shots but they just weren't falling in. And after Kris Westphall and Malcom Miller, the Trojans' tallest players, got two personal fouls, Parrish was forced to substitute them out. The Trojans only scored eight points in the second quarter, and BCC had cut the lead to four.

The second half began with both teams playing very cautiously and patiently on offense, and neither team scored in the first two minutes. Miller put a stop to this when he returned to the game, and made several big defensive plays that energized his team.

The highlight of these came when Miller dived for a loose ball going out of bounds in the back court, only to give it to a BCC guard Herbie Schwat, who promptly attempted a jump shot. Miller recovered from out of bounds and leapt to completely block Schwat's shot.

Miller was also on fire on offense in the second half, often charging down the court and taking it to the basket himself. He ended up leading his team in scoring with 16 points. The team responded to Miller's play with an increased aggressiveness on defense that held BCC to eight points in the third quarter.

While BCC managed to make it a close game in the fourth quarter, a couple of key turnovers and defensive rebounds that led to points allowed Gaithersburg to secure the lead. With a minute to go and down by seven, BCC was forced to intentionally foul to stop the clock.

Parrish was not worried about such a close game in the first round of the tournament.

"We came in expecting a battle," he said. "In the playoffs, every game is going to be like this."

Tonight Gaithersburg will play Sherwood, a team it split its two games with, winning away and losing at home. Sherwood beat Wootton, who Gaithersburg beat in a close overtime battle the last they played, 50-46.