KEYSER, W.Va. — Little separated Keyser and Mountain Ridge over three quarters — then Kam Samples caught fire.
The senior buried three straight 3-pointers midway through the fourth period, turning a narrow Keyser lead into a decisive one.
Samples scored 16 in the second half in all, and for the fourth time in five weeks, the area’s No. 1-ranked team fell, as top-ranked Mountain Ridge was knocked off by Keyser, 51-39, on Monday.
“He’s a very confident player,” Keyser head coach Scott Furey said of Samples. “He’s the kind of guy that can get in that rhythm and has no conscience about it. ‘Yeah, I can make this, so I’m gonna take this.’ Those were obviously huge 3s, back-to-back-to-back.”
Mountain Ridge (8-8) moved into the top spot this week after defeating then-No. 1 Fort Hill, 60-52, last Wednesday.
Keyser (6-8) joined the Miners as teams to upset No. 1s along with Allegany (over Southern) in Week 6 and Southern (Hampshire) in Week 5.
Four different No. 1s have fallen, defeated by four different teams.
The Golden Tornado’s lead stood at 36-34 before Samples’ barrage with a little more than five minutes to play.
By the time it was over, Keyser was up 45-36, prompting a Mountain Ridge timeout with 3:15 remaining.
An old-fashioned three-point play by Owen McGeady with 1:52 remaining clawed the Miners within 47-39, but they’d get no closer.
Samples made four 3-pointers and finished with 18 points, a season-high and his most since scoring 16 in a 63-47 win over Southern on Dec. 17.
“It just felt great hearing the crowd cheering when I was hitting the shots,” Samples said. “I just kept shooting and shooting, trusting my teammates who put the trust in me. I just kept making them.”
Much of the contest was a physical slog due to the physical play allowed by the officials.
Mountain Ridge came in averaging 17.1 free-throw attempts per game through its first 15 games but shot just four Monday.
Keyser attempted just six free throws, down from its 16.3 per game average.
The result was a tightly-contested game, which Keyser led 10-9 after the first quarter and 34-29 after three periods. The game was tied at 18 at the half.
“We knew Keyser was going to be a dangerous team,” Mountain Ridge head coach Tim Nightengale said. “They’re a team that matches up size-wise with us. We just felt like we got beat up tonight. We shot four free throws for the game. It was a very physical game. We didn’t handle that physicality.”
Keyser big man Braylon McGreevy followed up his season-high 25-point performance in a 57-51 win over Frankfort on Friday with another double-figure outing — his sixth straight. He scored 12 and Lane Champion added nine.
Mountain Ridge was paced by John Delaney’s 12 points, Ian Duncan tallied nine, McGeady added eight and Cameron Breighner scored seven.
With field goals at a premium, Keyser found an edge by controlling the glass and getting the bulk of the 50-50 balls.
“We’ve really focused a lot on (rebounding) and really hammered that home,” Furey said. “Lane especially, the last three or four games, has really been active around the rim.”
Mountain Ridge’s 39 points were its fewest since December. The Miners had won eight of nine games coming in, scoring an average of 74.7 points per game over that span.
“You’ve got to understand how the game’s being called, and you’ve got to be strong with the ball,” Nightengale said. “There were several times where they just took the ball right out of our hands. Several times where we were loose with our dribble and lost possession of the ball.
“If a game’s going to be played that way, and going into the playoffs it very well could, we have to learn from that and be able to handle that.”
Mountain Ridge (4-2 Western Maryland Athletic Conference) will look for a rebound when it hosts No. 5 Allegany (8-10, 2-5 WestMAC) on Wednesday at 7 p.m., weather permitting.
Keyser aims to play spoiler again at No. 3 Southern (9-6) on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
“You’re missing great area basketball if you’re not coming out and catching games right now,” Furey said. “Everybody is within five, six, eight points of each other every night. There’s not that one dominant team.”