Western comes up short

ORANGE — Thanks to some gutsy defensive play down the stretch, Orange County upended Western Albemarle on Tuesday night in front of a raucous home crowd in its regular-season finale.

The Hornets got big steals from Tyler Seal and Quintin Hunter in the closing seconds and made 3 of 4 free throws in the final three seconds to prevail 69-65 and earn their biggest win of the season thus far.

A win by the Warriors would have forced a tiebreaker to determine the Jefferson District regular season champion. Instead, Orange spoiled those plans. Western (14-6, 9-3 JD) finishes the season in second place behind Charlottesville, a team it beat last Friday.

Orange coach Keyode Rogers couldn’t have been more pleased that his team ended the regular season on a high note.

“It was a win that was very much needed heading into tournament time — it came at the right time at the right part of the year, Rogers said. “It looked like it was going tit for tat for a while — they were up three and then we’d score. For a long time, we traded buckets. Defense took over at the end, and we got the steal we needed.”

Three steals to be exact. Trailing 65-64, Seal came up with the ball, then passed to D.J. Brown for an easy bucket as the Hornets took a 66-65 lead. Then Hunter intercepted a Western pass and was fouled. He made one of two free throws to give his team a two-point cushion with three seconds to play. Seal then got another steal as he picked off the inbounds pass and made two free throws to seal the win.

“We didn’t take care of the ball very well and we didn’t get any stops down the stretch,” Western Albemarle coach Darren Maynard said. “Orange played very hard — they really went after it tonight.”

Orange (12-10, 7-5), which was coming off a loss to William Monroe on Monday, came out with a defensive intensity that they maintained throughout.

“That’s my key — we want to play good defense. We’ve been up and down with it this year,” Rogers said. “We’ve had moments where we relax with it too much and moments where we didn’t play at all. But tonight wasn’t one of those moments. They came in, they were prepared, they were fired up and ready to go.”

Hunter finished with a team-high 20 points, including nine in the fourth quarter, and Brown added 17. But the Hornets also got solid production from Chad Galimore underneath and the freshman guard Seal. Galimore finished with eight points and Seal had six points to go along with three steals. Spencer Jarrell also contributed six points.

Western Albemarle — which played without starting point guard Ryan Hughes — had its chances to pull away, but couldn’t capitalize.

Travis Washington poured in a game-high 25 points as he went 16 for 16 from the free-throw line. Christian Pierce finished with 16 points.

Orange will host Monticello in the district tournament quarterfinals on Friday, and Western will likely play Louisa County.