After overcoming a 14-point deficit to win a first round game in the Northern Region basketball tournament, you might expect the senior forward who engineered the comeback and closed out the game with his free throws down the stretch to be the most fired up person on the court. Instead, it was the head coach who couldn't stay in one spot, bouncing around as he answered questions minutes after the victory.
Thomas Van Wazer scored 22 points, including nine during a 13-4 run near the end of the first half and eight from the free throw line in the final minutes to lead McLean to a 54-45 win over Lake Braddock Monday night. Sango Amolo added 16 points and Gordon Rogo had 10 for the Highlanders, who are continuing to build what may be the most successful season in school history.
Van Wazer's 3-pointer and layup on consecutive possessions invigorated the crowd, and team, after the Bruins built an 18-4 lead. While head coach Kevin Roller was happy with his team's shot selection in the early going even when they just weren't falling, as the deficit grew the Highlanders began to rush shots.
"All of a sudden we're trying to drive everything instead of moving the ball," Roller said.
Van Wazer's shot changed all that.
"We were getting good shots at the beginning of the game," Van Wazer said. "I knew that I wanted the ball to get a spark, and when I shot that three, I knew it was going in as soon as it left my hands."
From there, Amolo added a pair of layups, and even though Rogo couldn't consolidate a chance for a 4-point play when he was fouled on a long range shot with 1.3 seconds remaining in the first half, McLean had trimmed Lake Braddock's lead to five at the half.
The Highlanders started the second half just as hot as they finished the first. They took their first lead since Rogo made it 2-0 on his first shot of the game when Van Wazer drew a foul on a layup that hit every inch of the rim before dropping at the 3:23 mark of the third quarter. McLean pushed the lead to 36-30, and a 7-0 run by the Bruins only briefly gave them the lead back before the Highlanders pulled away, thanks in part to a skillful behind the back layup by Amolo.
"We were more frustrated than panicked," Van Wazer said of the deficit. "We knew once we started playing like a team again, with the composure we know we have, we'd be right back in the game."
Roller echoed that sentiment.
"We were down a little later in the first half than I was happy with, but we don't panic. We never panic," he said. "We got our feet underneath us, and I was thankful the gap wasn't too big."
McLean earned another home game on Wednesday against the winner of Centreville and Washington-Lee, though getting by Lake Braddock may have been the more difficult task. The Bruins were last year's cinderella story, knocking off top-seeded Chantilly and nearly upsetting Langley in the regional quarterfinals. Centreville, meanwhile, finished the 2012 regular season with an overall losing record, and no National District team besides Mount Vernon has made it out of the second round of regionals in the last six years.
While the Liberty District took a back seat to the Patriot and Concorde last year, both Roller and Van Wazer scoffed at the idea that McLean would be catching anyone off guard. With the veteran talent this year, it's not out of the question that both Northern Region representatives in the state tournament will hail from the Liberty.
"The district last year was young," Roller said. "The district this year is pretty senior-laden and there are some teams with some pretty good records."
