Woodlawn boys basketball spoils Catonsville’s senior night with 55-38 victory (2024)

Woodlawn senior Tamar Sims had 18 points and 10 rebounds and classmate Brian Vandiver added 14 points to lift the Warriors past Catonsville, 55-38, on the Comets’ senior night.

Sims had 14 points in the first half when the Warriors built a 27-12 lead.

“I’m always aggressive, so basically the coaches just tell me to play and I play,” Sims said. “I share the ball with my team a lot and I trust my players to do whatthey do best.”

The Warriors switched from a man-to-man defense to a matchup zone and held the Comets scoreless for over six minutes after a 3-pointer by Kyle Patterson early in the second quarter cut the lead to 13-9.

The Warriors scored 14 straight points during that stretch.

“We started out in a man because they are very good shooters, so we had to stop the bleeding. So we went to a matchup zone where it looked like a zone, but really we were playing a man out of the zone,” Woodlawn coach John Dixon said. “We had to double team the shooters; they have very good shooters. Mikey Owens is a phenomenal shooter and we had to make sure he couldn’t get going, but he still got going.”

Owens didn’t get going until the second half when he made three 3-pointers and scored 11 of his team-high 13 points.

Owens hit a pair of 3s and Will Turner scored five points in the third quarter when the Comets chopped a 19-point lead to seven with 28 seconds left in the third quarter, but James Stevens hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer and the Warriors led 38-28 at the break.

Stevens canned another trey early in the fourth giving the Warriors a 13-point lead they extended with seven free throws in the final quarter.

The Warriors ended the regular season 9-11, while the Comets finished 15-6.

“We pride ourselves on defense, we had a rough start to the year until we started playing team basketball,” Dixon said. “We just started picking up and coming together and starting to jell together with senior leadership. That’s what got us going.”

It was the second loss in a row for the Comets.

“It was just one of those games or bad timing to miss shots and Woodlawn seemed to make everything that they threw up. So it was a little deflating not getting a rhythm while the other team was hitting everything,” Catonsville coach Jason Harris said. “We were struggling with pulling ourselves out of that hole.”

Catonsville came into the game with a chance to clinch the number one seed in the region, but will likely be a two or three seed.

“It’s fatigue at times and it’s not about the Xs and Os; we know what to do on the Xs and Os,” Harris said. “It’s just about deciding to come with that energy and I feel like right now the guys have been putting a lot of pressure on themselves to do well because we’ve had such a special season, so I think that we just need a reset and take a deep breath and get ready for season number two.”

Before the game, seniors Trey Gould, Cole Lovell, Trevon McNeeley, Will Roberson, Owens and Patterson were honored and Harris praised their contributions.

“I think that the seniors all year have taken so much pride in having a special season with these group of guys and I believe their emotions tonight were so high and running around that it was kind of hard to regroup when we hit some adversity,” Harris said.

Woodlawn — 13 14 11 17— 55

Catonsville — 6 6 16 10 — 38

W: Tamar Sims 18, Brian Vandiver 14, Tyshaun Washington 7, James Stevens 7, Anothy Johnson 4, Latrell Robinson 3, Desmond Fisher 2.

C: Mike Owens 13, Will Turner 7, Gavin Edwards 5, Trey Gould 5, Nate Holub Smith 4, Kyle Patterson 4,