Park View Upends Potomac Falls

By Matt Brooks (Contact)

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

With 29.4 seconds remaining in Tuesday's Dulles District tournament quarterfinal at Potomac Falls, Park View's Jordan Owens shuffled to the bench with his head hanging. He had just missed the first of two free-throw attempts that would have boosted the Patriots' narrow two-point lead over their hosts and now had the duration of a full timeout to think about his second shot.

But when the timeout was over, the junior forward sprinted to the free-throw line, immediately got into his shooting stance and held out his hands to receive the ball, even as the Panthers were just returning to the court from their huddle. Without hesitation, Owens drilled the second free throw and coupled with freshman Ryan McCarter's free throw 18 seconds later, that proved to be the difference as the fifth-seeded Patriots upended No. 4 Potomac Falls 57-55 to advance to Thursday's semifinals.

"I knew I had to make it to make it a three-point game," Owens said of the free throw. "I knew I could drop it. I missed the one before but my teammates trusted me and we were ready to pick up the defense right after I made that shot."

Following Owens' make, the Panthers cut the lead back to 56-55 on a Tarrell Owens runner and then forced Park View to call a timeout after the Patriots were unable to inbound the ball. When the Patriots finally did get it in, Potomac Falls fouled McCarter – who was just called up from junior varsity on Jan. 23 – and the freshman made one of two to push the lead back to two. The Panthers tried to get the ball to Lukas Mihailovich on the perimeter for a final shot but Jordan Owens tipped Gregory Woodlief's pass. Tarrell Owens recovered the loose ball and tried to get a shot off, but it never got beyond the outstretched hands of McCarter and Jordan Owens and the Patriots held on for their first road win over their Sterling rivals since 2002.

The Patriots (9-14) fell behind 11-2 in the early going but battled back to tie the score twice just after the start of the second quarter but never were able to take the lead and went into halftime trailing, 27-20. In the third, Park View got to within two points on multiple occasions before finally claiming their first lead of the game on Tim French’s putback with 29 seconds left in the quarter. But Potomac Falls answered right back as Woodlief sank a runner just before the buzzer for a second straight quarter to put the Panthers back in front 39-38 heading into the fourth.

"We knew it would be a battle," Park View Coach Mike Koscinski said. "We lost to them by 20 in December, we lost by nine here on this floor less than three weeks ago. We wanted to be in that position to win the game at the end."

From there, the two teams battled back and forth in a final frame that saw five ties and three lead changes. The Patriots pulled away for good on a nifty pass from senior center Kenny Smith for an open Donnie Royer layup with just over a minute remaining in the game.

"It was really frustrating the whole game being down by two or three, getting really close," Owens said. "There at the end we felt the momentum was going our way and we made some baskets and got ahead. It felt good to finally get a win here."

McCarter led Park View with 15 points on a night where neither team shot the ball well and Patriots leading scorers Freeman and Smith combined to make just 6 of 24 shots from the field. Owens scored 11 of his 13 points in the second half while Freeman finished with 11. Royer connected on his final four shots to finish with 10 and Smith had 13 rebounds to go along with his six points.

"We worked as a team tonight," Freeman said. "McCarter stepped up and he’s done that ever since he came up to varsity. Jordan hit his free throws at the end, Donnie is a player that nobody knows about and he’s had some good games. But those three guys always contribute for us and they did it again tonight."

Woodlief scored 11 of his game-high 16 points after the break and Mihailovich added 15 as the Panthers (14-9) shot just 32 percent from the field and made only 4 of 20 from beyond the arc. Leading scorer Kevin Bartnick went without a field goal and finished with only one point.

"Bartnick and Mihailovich averaged 43 against us this season, so the only thing was to go all out on those two and test the other three to see if they could beat us," Koscinski said. "[Tarrell] Owens made some great plays and he was making me nervous with his play, but our thing was don't let those two beat you, make the other guys beat you."

By virtue of Sherando's loss in the Northwestern District tournament first round on Friday and losses by Heritage, Freedom and Briar Woods on Tuesday, the Panthers will qualify for the Region II Division 4 tournament, Coach Jeff Hawes said.

"I've got some seniors that I love and I'm happy that we've got a little more time," Hawes said. "And I've got some young guys that I'm excited they're going to get this experience and go another week. It's not out of the realm of possibility that we could go in there and make some noise, too."

The Patriots were upset on Senior Night last week against Briar Woods and were desperate to extend their season for at least one more day. On Thursday they'll face their other Sterling rivals as they look to knock off top-seeded Dominion – the only district team they have yet to beat this season.

"We're hungry and we have nothing to be nervous about," Koscinski said. "We've had some struggles this season but we told the guys to just have a fun week and let it loose and play as hard as we can."

Tagged: basketball, Briar Woods High School, Broad Run High School, Dominion High School, Freedom High School , Heritage High School, high school sports, Loudoun County High School, Loudoun Valley High School, Park View High School, Potomac Falls High School, South Lakes High School, Stone Bridge High School

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