4A SE BOYS FINAL: Guts lead St. James to glory with region championship, trip to Birmingham

By TIM GAYLE 

It was pure guts. 

Body language spoke volumes as St. James and Booker T. Washington entered the final minute of a no-holds-barred battle for the Class 4A Southeast Regional championship.

The two teams had battled evenly throughout most of the 32-minute contest, but there was nothing left in the Trojan players. All the adrenaline, the energy, everything but the desire had been drained from players fighting an uphill battle to contain the Golden Eagles. And, yet, here they were facing the possibility of another loss to their Area 3 rival or maybe even a four-minute overtime period.

“We would have had to figure it out, we would have had to push through,” St. James’ senior guard Bradley Thomas said of the possibility of overtime. “We were all tired, we were dead, we were using everything we had because that’s a really good team over there.”

Instead, Thomas sank the game-winning basket, Ethan Beard intercepted a pass in the final seconds and the Trojans held on to beat their area rival, 58-57, and advance to the state tournament for the first time in school history.

“This is something we’ve been talking about since the beginning of the season,” Thomas said. “We’re still not done but for us to go to state, something this school has never done before, it means a lot.”

St. James (18-6) will face Jacksonville (26-5) in Legacy Arena on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. Booker T. Washington, which has reached the state tournament in two of the last three years, ends the season at 12-9.

Nigel Card took over a program that had lost in the first round or the semifinals of the area tournament nine of the 11 years prior to his arrival in 2010. Now in his 12th season, he finally gets to take a team to the state tournament. 

“It means a lot,” he said. “When you coach as long as I’ve coached and then have a chance to take a team to the state tournament when no one else has ever done it at St. James, it is an unbelievable feeling for me, to be able to sit on the sidelines and help those guys through this process.”

In one of the most inspiring wins of the 2022 Southeast Regional, four Trojans played 30 or more minutes, giving everything they had to keep pace with a team that had lost in the 2021 state championship game to Anniston and had thrashed the Trojans by 15 points just two weeks ago.

“My team was dead tired,” Card said. “They were fighting through fatigue and they were doing all they could to stay out there on the floor and compete. Just to see that grit in your team, you’ve got to feel excited as a coach. That’s what they displayed today,”

To try and put the win in perspective, the Trojans had faced the Golden Eagles six previous times as area rivals over the last two seasons, compiling an 0-6 record and losing by an average of 18.2 points per game. 

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say when they went up, we don’t think about the last game because that’s just natural instinct,” Thomas said. “But at the end of the day, we know this is a do-or-die game so you just have to fight through. For a team to beat us that many times, we just can’t have that. You just have to step up and grow up.” 

The Trojans played deliberate and smart, running when they could and looking for openings in the BTW defense when they couldn’t. They owned a three-point lead after the first quarter and trailed by three at the break, but continued to hang close to the Golden Eagles. In the fourth quarter, they seized the moment as Thomas converted a three-point play to give St. James a four-point lead with 5:26 left.

Nearly two minutes later, they doubled the lead as Thomas scored on an assist from Beard and returned the favor seconds later for an eight-point lead. 

Just as quickly, it was gone. BTW turned up the pressure and the Trojans were too tired to answer. A KJ Jackson basket was the only response in a span of 2:26 that included five Trojan turnovers and a missed one-and-one that allowed the Golden Eagles to take a 57-56 lead with 44.5 seconds remaining on a three-point play by Elijah Hall. 

Thomas answered eight seconds later on a drive through the lane to put the Trojans back in front with what proved to be the game-winning basket. Mkael King missed on a jumper in the lane but a Thomas turnover and another missed one-and-one opportunity by Beard would give the Golden Eagles one last opportunity.

Following a timeout with 6.9 seconds, Hall made a bad pass to Joseph Phillips at the sideline, but Phillips was forced to throw the ball back in the direction of Hall as he was falling out of bounds. Beard was there to snag the ball and send the Trojans to the state tournament.  

BTW struggled to find any offensive consistency, hitting just 24 of 68 shots (35.3 percent) and just one of its 13 3-point attempts. Cameron Whitfield led the Golden Eagles with 15 points, followed by Anthony Tarver with 10 points and 10 rebounds. 

“We talked about trying to give them different looks throughout the game, change them up, play a little man, a little zone, a little triangle-and-two,” Card said. “We tried to keep them off balance from an offensive standpoint, but late in the game they decided they were just going to drive the ball at us and that was effective for them.”

Thomas led the Trojans with 22 points, followed by Beard with 12 and Jackson with eight points and 13 rebounds. 

The Trojan boys will be joining the Trojan girls, who advanced to the state tournament with a win over Geneva. But as Thomas pointed out, just earning a trip to Birmingham isn’t enough.

“This team has had fight all year,” Card said. “It doesn’t matter who they’re playing, they will bring their best. Sometimes that’s not good enough, but every game they bring their best and they will compete until the end.”