CHARLOTTESVILLE — For Silas Spaulding and the Eastern Hancock Royals, last weekend was a wake-up call.
After going 9-0 to open the season — despite two rounds of 14-day quarantines since late November — the Class 2A Royals lost their first game this year at 2A No. 2 Shenandoah on Saturday.
Or as Spaulding puts it, the 39-point loss was a complete embarrassment.
“I felt like after getting our (tails) kicked in the last game (69-30), we needed to show that we weren’t like that. That it was just a game,” Silas Spaulding said. “I really wanted to win.”
On Friday night, the sophomore guard lived up to his words, posting a career-high 30 points and burying eight 3-pointers to power the Royals (10-1) past the Lapel Bulldogs 78-61.
“It was my dad’s 250th win, and I wanted to make it one I would remember and he will, too,” Silas said.
Coach Aaron Spaulding’s bunch came out firing against Lapel (4-9), turning a quick 2-0 deficit and 5-all tie in the first quarter into a double-digit lead by the second.
Silas Spaulding had 17 points in the first half with five 3-pointers, his brother Jacob Spaulding finished with 18 points and two treys, while Drew White had 11 points and two of the team’s 15 3-pointers overall.
“We have a lot of guys who are really confident from three. I don’t think we have a guy who doesn’t feel confident,” Silas Spaulding said. “They shoot if they’re wide open, and Drew (White) did tonight. I told him in the beginning of the game, if they leave you wide open, you got to shoot it, and he made them.”
White, a 6-foot-2 senior forward, converted the team’s first long-range jumper to put the Royals up 3-2 and added his second later in the first quarter to make it 13-8 by the 6-minute mark.
The Royals buried nine 3-pointers through the first eight minutes and never looked back, building a 12-point lead in the second quarter and extending it to 20 points by the third.
The Royals entered their home game converting 40 percent (91-for-230) from 3-point range. In their win against Lapel, they attempted 32 and dropped them through the hoop at 46 percent.
Junior Landon O’Neal had one 3-pointer and added nine points, while junior Zach Arnold had six points on a pair of treys.
“It was important to us to win. Obviously, we had a rough night last Saturday, especially the second half. I felt we competed fairly well in the first half, but then it kind of snowballed in the second half, so it gave us a little bit of humble pie,” Aaron Spaulding said. “We don’t ever want it, but we probably needed it. Tonight, I felt we responded.”
The Royals shot a blistering 56 percent from the field and limited their turnovers to seven overall to keep the Bulldogs down by double figures after Silas Spaulding’s transition layup off a Jacob Spaulding steal with 6:40 remaining in the third quarter.
Ahead 39-27 at that point, the Royals surged to a 61-41 advantage in the third quarter’s final minute.
Silas Spaulding’s highest single-game point total prior to Friday was 18 — twice — posted once last season and this year again versus Tri-Central on Dec. 12.
He was averaging 11.0 points per game before more than doubled his routine output.
“I thought we really did well making that extra pass, and we have a lot of guys who can really shoot the ball that making the extra pass, if we have the opportunity for open looks, then we can be pretty dangerous,” said Aaron Spaulding, who is 250-230 in 22 seasons at Eastern Hancock.
“The thing I think we have over a lot of people is that we’re so deep. A lot of teams, you have one or two guys you really have to focus on stopping, but we got multiple guys who can go double figures on any given night. We’ve got several guys who could go for 20 or more any night. That’s been our biggest bonus.”
Jacob Spaulding had four assists to tie sophomore Edric Miller for the team lead. Eight different Royals recorded at least one assist with White, Rainbolt and Cameron Wise each logging two apiece.
“With our bond and chemistry I feel it makes it easy to play together because we all want each other to succeed and win,” Silas Spaulding said. “When someone does well, we’re not selfish. We’re happy for them. We’ve been with each other forever, seen each other grow up. We’ve lost a lot together and we’ve won a lot together, so it’s to be together.”
Just being on the court is a win for the Royals, who sat for 17 days from late November and another 20 days beginning on Jan. 3 due to two stints of contact-tracing quarantines.
Their win over Lapel marked the team’s third game back since their second quarantine.
“A lot of these kids I’ve been coaching or they’ve been playing since kindergarten, even the two grades together,” Aaron Spaulding said. “I think that helps us a lot. These kids have been playing together for a long, long time, and also while we’ve been quarantined twice, we have enough barns and things around here, they’re not sitting at home on their couch while in quarantine.”
They stayed sharp and it was put on display behind a 24-point first quarter and a 26-point third.
Lapel only had one double-digit scorer in Camren Sullivan with a team-high 26 points. He had seven 3-pointers, including four in the second half as the Bulldogs pulled within six points once after trailing by a dozen.
But, the Royals have a new streak to resume.
“We went to nine and lost one. Now, my goal is taking it every game at a time. Our motto is 1-0, every game because you never know when the season can be shut down because of the pandemic,” Silas Spaulding said.
