Boys Basketball: Middletown looks to take roller-coaster ride to a state championship

By Ben Spector
Winning After MidKnight

                       

To say that this season for the Middletown High School Knights Boys Basketball team has been a roller coaster ride would be a bit of an understatement. From an emotional perspective and a success perspective the Knights have experienced the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows.

The Knights have a chance though to take that roller coaster ride to the finish line when they start their playoff run taking on the #5 seed Boonsboro High School Warriors in the sectional quarterfinal round of the 2015 Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association (M.P.S.S.A.A.) 2A Boys Basketball State Tournament.

The emotional side of the season has been well-documented but lying under that has been the success side that the team has seen gone back-and-forth over the course of the season.

The Knights started out their season, with a 1-4 record and struggling overall to put wins together and more importantly win the close games when they mattered. During, the midway point of the season the Knights would start to pick up wins but Middletown still couldn’t consistently find the play that they were looking for and saw their record dip under and over the .500 mark multiple times.

Starting the month of February, the Knights held a 7-8 record before their first contest and knew that they would have to play better basketball if they wanted to make a run deep in the playoffs.

The Knights answered that call going 5-2 over that time including a important overtime win against the Urbana High School Hawks. Middletown would finish their season with a 12-10 record and head into their playoff contest against the Warriors on February 27^th with extra momentum and a new lease on their season.

“We feel good, and for the most part we have played pretty well in the last 7 games so the momentum we’ve attained should help us,” said Knights senior guard Ian Roy. “It’s going to come down to doing the little things in terms of a long playoff run.”

Middletown has not played the Warriors this year but the two teams are familiar with each other as they played each other last year in the first round of the playoffs with the Knights easily dispatching the Warriors in a double-digit victory.

Middletown has been close to being a top team in the county all year, taking down two of the top teams in the county, Urbana and the Tuscarora High School Titans, but have found themselves on the losing side of the score against other top teams such as the Oakdale High School Bears and Lingnaore High School Lancers because of late-game struggles.

The Knights have turned the theme of late-game struggles around coming from behind to beat Urbana, in what can be considered a promising sign for a Knights team.

In their last game, the Knights also had a bit of comeback magic in their bag, reversing a 16 point first quarter deficit to just 3 points in the fourth quarter before falling to Tuscarora by 8.

Playing in the Knights favor is that the Section I of the 2A West region is much weaker than other regions in the M.P.S.S.A.A. and even Class 2A which gives the Knights a good chance to make it out of the section and the region. Although, the Knights received a #4 seed based on record, the media polls in the Frederick News-Post and Herald-Mail say otherwise putting the Knights, strength-wise, as a #2 seed in the section.

Middletown will need some help, though, if they want to get out of the section as with a win they will take on the #1 seed Oakdale High School Bears, who they lost two twice during the regular season.

For now, Middletown will focus on the road ahead and the highs and lows that they have overcome this season. They wouldn’t want it any other way.