Milford Mill boys basketball guard Kam Lawson wasn’t on the team when the Millers lost to Overlea by seven points earlier in the season. But he came up big for his team during Thursday’s Class 3A North Region I semifinal.
Lawson, only a sophomore, led Milford Mill with 19 points, helping his fifth-seeded Millers earn a road upset against top-seeded Overlea, 69-58.
“I just wanted to win,” Lawson said. “Hard work with my team; we’ve been through a lot. We just wanted to win, so I did whatever I had to do to win.”
It was a physical game throughout, starting in the first quarter when Milford Mill picked up a technical foul. The chippiness remained throughout the game and five Millers were ejected midway through the third quarter. Two players, one from each team, started to get into it after the whistle, and coach Ryan Smith called a timeout. Five Milford Mill bench players stepped onto the court, and they were all subsequently ejected.
It was an even game for the first quarter. Overlea’s Korrie Foster had a hot hand and scored eight of his game-high 28 points in the opening frame, but the game was tied at 14.
“He stepped up big time for us,” Overlea coach Will Watts said. “He’s been our third-leading scorer all year, and he stepped up when we needed him.”
Watts said a couple of his players were under the weather. He didn’t want to use it as an excuse since they still played, but he said the team was impacted by it. Overlea’s top two scorers, guards Korey Blair and Tjay Beckles, combined for 14 points.
Free throw shooting was a rough patch for Overlea throughout the first half as the Falcons were just 2-for-8 from the line. The physical game led to lots of free throws. Milford Mill went 14-for-27 from the stripe, a significant advantage in volume over Overlea.
“Free throw shooting has been our Achilles’ heel all year,” Smith said. “We got 10 losses; I can tell you around six of them came down the stretch where we couldn’t make a foul shot.”
The close losses gave the Millers confidence, though, and Smith said the team’s mentality was that the regular season didn’t matter. Everything starts over in the playoffs.
Milford Mill came alive in the second quarter, opening on a 7-0 run thanks in part to forward Isaiah Howard finding his rhythm. He scored eight in the second quarter and finished with 15 to go with 10 rebounds.
“My coaches always tell me that in a 2-3, the middle is always open,” Howard said. “On the boards, they can’t control it. So I always box out, get in my position, and just make myself available to score.”
The Millers took a 37-24 lead into halftime and didn’t look back from there. Even after the ejections severely cut into its depth, Smith’s squad kept its composure.
Blair hit a 3-pointer midway through the fourth quarter to bring the Falcons with 10, but that was as close as they’d get.
“[The win] means everything,” Smith said. “Every time I went to the state championship, it was on the road. I’m used to it. Plus, these guys, they had a heck of a schedule. We played all kinds of people; 3-point shooting, big guys, speedy, fast. So they’ve been prepared. The record means nothing when we get to the playoffs, though. I tell them that all the time.”
