By JOHN STREIT Special to The Virginian-Pilot
On a night when Booker T. Washington’s DeShawn Painter couldn’t find a rhythm, it looked like the 6-foot-9 inch junior found just enough juice to lift the Bookers at the Ronald Curry Christmas Classic.
But Kecoughtan’s Anthony Dorsey had other plans.
After Painter capped a season-low eight-point performance with a free throw to make it 60-60 with less than a minute left, the Warriors fought off a swarming Bookers defense to call a time out with six seconds left.
But as a slew of Bookers swarmed to reigning Peninsula District Player of the Year Ricardo Ratliffe, Dorsey slipped into the paint to record the game winning lay-up, lifting Kecoughtan to a rousing 62-60 win at Hampton University’s Holland Hall on Wednesday night.
“If I get hot, everyone thinks this is a one-man team, so they’re going to come at me” Ratliffe said. “But we’ve got (Xavier Lee) and we’ve got Dorsey. They’ve got to watch all three of us.”
Kecoughtan’s smothering zone defense held Painter to just two points through the first three quarters and put him in foul trouble early. Those two points came on two free throws out of six attempts in the first half.
“Painter’s got to be a little more assertive,” Booker T. coach Darren Sandlerin said. “I thought our perimeter play was pretty okay, we knocked some shots down and got some shots on the break, we had some good opportunities in the press, but I think when they did get a chance to get into the paint, they got second shots – easy shots and easy opportunities.”
Even with Painter sitting most of the second quarter with three fouls, Desmond Lee turned in a stalwart’s effort for Booker T., tallying a game-high 24 points.
Ratliffe drained 22 points, Xavier Lee netted 14 and Dorsey came up with 16 for Kecoughtan.
At times the Bookers appeared poised to run away with the contest, like when they built a seven-point advantage late in the first quarter. But the Warriors’ outside shooting kept the game close. Dorsey and Ratliffe knocked down back-to-back treys to cut the Bookers’ lead to 13-12.
Booker T. squandered another opportunity in the third quarter, going on a dominating 10-2 stretch to extend its lead to seven points again at 44-37.
“We’d miss two or three free throws, and then they’d score, then they’d be within two or four points,” Sanderlin said. “And the kind of buckets they were getting, we were cutting out the work… We never buckled down.”
But as Kecoughtan chipped away at the Bookers’ advantage, Painter temporarily broke out of his slump to post five consecutive points and give his team a 58-53 lead late in the fourth.
After Ratliffe sank two from the foul line, Booker T.’s Earl Norfleet turned the ball over on a five-second violation, setting up Ratliffe’s go-ahead 3-pointer to put the Warriors ahead at 60-59 for the first time since the opening minutes of the third quarter.
It seemed fitting that Painter’s first foul shot with the chance to tie the game rimmed out, and though his next shot evened the score, all those misses ended up haunting the Bookers.
“He’s going to get his touches – I just wanted to limit those touch and know where he is at all times,” Hines said of Painter. “We wanted to make him work for any touch that he got or any shot that he got.”
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