CHARLOTTESVILLE — The shots didn’t fall early, but the undersized Eastern Hancock Royals refused to go quietly on Wednesday night.
Trailing from the first minute against Union County, the Royals clawed back from a poor-shooting night and tied the game twice in the fourth quarter before eventually running out of steam 47-41.
The Royals struggled from the field without their second-leading scorer, Chloe O’Neal, who is sidelined by illness. O’Neal averages 9.6 points and 4.5 rebounds per game, and her contributions were sorely missed.
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“She’s our second-leading scorer and our second-leading rebounder, so not having her on the floor disrupted our normal flow,” Eastern Hancock head coach Shari Doud said. “She’s always at the center of the mix of it. You always have to adjust. Sometimes it works, and sometimes there’s still a struggle.”
The adversity was two-fold for the Royals (10-6), who dropped their third game out of the last four. With their tallest player listed at 5-foot-9, the visiting Patriots (14-3) relied on their height to overwhelm the Royals.
Madison Gray, who stands 5-11, went to work inside and posted 16 of the Patriots’ 19 first-half points. She finished with a game-high 29 points, shooting 9 of 13 from the floor and went 11-for-11 from the free-throw line.
“She is complete. She can handle. She can defend. She can finish inside. She can knockdown shots outside. Her basketball I.Q. is just phenomenal,” Doud said. “She drew a lot of attention from us, and she was still able to finish shots.
“That’s a reflection of our lack of size. We have quick and athletic kids. Kids that can jump, but our size isn’t there,” Doud added. “I’m proud of the kids for utilizing every inch of their size. Some play bigger than they are, so they have big hearts, even though they’re little people.”
Gray came into the night averaging 20.9 points and 7.0 rebounds per game and she stayed on or near those projections with five rebounds.
She buried four of the Patriots first five buckets to put Union County ahead 11-0 as Eastern Hancock went 0-for-6 before converting their first field goal.
“The kids are executing offenses and defenses the way we want them to, we just have to hope that we can start knocking down a better percentage of shots, then we’ve been able to,” Doud said. “I don’t feel like they forced us to take bad shots, we just aren’t hitting them right now.”
The Royals cut the deficit to 19-14 by halftime with a pass from Jocelyn Duncan to Aly Spaulding, who banked in a buzzer-beating 3-pointer.
Duncan had a team-high 15 points and four rebounds. Spaulding added nine points, while Skyla Smith finished with seven.
“We had to really dig. They have height, so we had to focus on that on defense. That was our main focus, and on offense, we really had to move the ball to get our open looks,” Duncan said.
The shots started to fall for Eastern Hancock in the fourth quarter. The Royals turned a 33-25 deficit into an 8-0 run to tie the game.
A Spaulding 3-pointer, followed by a slick pass from Smith to Duncan in the lane made it 33-30. With 4:52 remaining, Duncan drilled her third 3-pointer of the game to make it 33-all.
“We forced them to come out of their zone because we were finally able to get the right type of ball movement against their zone and got some good looks and hit some shots,” Doud said. “So they did a good job of adjusting defensively when we able to tie the game up.”
A pair of foul shots by Spaulding tied the game at 35-35 with 4:17 left, but the Patriots went on a 7-2 run to reestablish their lead.
Union County hit 12 of 17 free throws in the fourth, including 10 of 15 to win its fifth straight game.
“When we hit the first two or three shots, we tend to steamroll. But, you might miss those shots, but you can’t get in our head about it,” Doud said. “We just have to find ways to score and finish shots, and maybe we’re saving it for this rough stretch we’re about to run into, and if that’s the case, then I’m perfectly fine with it.”
Hopefully, the return of O’Neal will be sooner rather than later, her teammates said.
“She’s one of our starting five, so without her, we have to work that much harder for her,” Duncan said. “We hope to have back.”
The Class 2A Royals are back at home on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. when they host Class A Waldron followed by Class A Daleville at home on Jan. 23.
