CUMBERLAND, Md. — With a championship on the line in a tight fourth quarter, Fort Hill played some of its best basketball of the season, and Allegany wasn’t able to match its level.
Fort Hill seemingly couldn’t miss in the decider, and 3s by Gamil and Jabril Daniels and a host of drives and finishes at the basket pushed the Sentinels’ lead as high as 13.
Allegany’s Zach Michael gave his best effort in the fourth with a pair of old-fashioned three-point plays as part of his game-high 21 points, but 20 turnovers by the Alco guards were too much to overcome.
It was far from its prettiest performance of the year, but No. 1 Fort Hill executed when it mattered most, handing No. 2 Allegany a 68-58 defeat to capture a second consecutive Class 1A West Region I championship.
“The kids, their attention to detail, has been really good throughout the week. That carried over to the floor,” Fort Hill head coach Thad Burner said. “We didn’t make great plays at times, but their effort was able to pull us through that.”
Fort Hill (19-4) advances to the state quarterfinals, where it’s locked into the No. 4 seed and is ensured a home game on either Friday or Saturday.
The Sentinels will host whoever wins the coin flip between Lake Clifton and Loch Raven.
Deshaun Brown paced the Fort Hill offense with 18 points off the bench to go along with five assists; Jabril Daniels had 15 points and three assists; Gamil Daniels tallied 11 points, five assists and five steals; and Steven Spencer and Landon Sensabaugh added seven each.
Michael had 21 points and seven rebounds for Allegany; Dylan Shaffer added a 14-point, 12-rebound double-double; Eli Imes scored nine off the bench; and Dae Dae Smith ended with eight points and nine assists.
Allegany dominated the glass 36-21, but it had 21 turnovers that led into 15 Fort Hill steals and a collection of transition points the other way.
The defeat gave Allegany a 20-5 finish to the season.
“We picked a bad time to play one of our worst games of the year,” Allegany head coach Tedd Eirich said. “Everything that we could’ve done bad, we did it. The turnovers were just off the charts tonight. I don’t know how many times we got the ball ripped out of our hands. We were soft.
“When you have over 20 turnovers amongst your guards, you’re not going to win a game.”
Fort Hill jumped out to a 7-0 lead and led 11-7 after a physical, sloppy opening period. Allegany responded in the second quarter, taking its first lead with a 3 by Imes at the 6:22 mark.
Allegany built a game-high six-point edge multiple times in the second, taking a 22-16 margin into the final minute before Fort Hill went on a 9-0 run in just 33 seconds.
Sensabaugh hit a 3 and Landyn Green scored an old fashioned three-point play to tie the score at 22 with 13 seconds left, and Brown drilled a buzzer-beating trey to put Fort Hill up 25-22 entering the locker room.
Just three points separated the two rivals for much of the third period — the Sentinels had the largest lead of the quarter at 41-37 — and another Sensabaugh 3 gave Fort Hill a 45-42 edge after three periods.
That’s when Fort Hill decided to spread the floor and let the Daniels brothers, Brown and Spencer drive to the basket, a tactic Burner credited to his assistants Nate Simpson and Gavin Palumbo.
Fort Hill outscored Allegany, 23-16, in the fourth, and its lead swelled to 61-48 with around three minutes to play. Jabril Daniels scored 12 of his points after halftime, and Brown scored 11.
“We thought we could get into a spread type of offense and beat people off the dribble,” Burner said. “They went zone, they got into some foul trouble, and we hit shots from the outside at that point to extend the lead.”
Allegany got Fort Hill forwards Liam Hamilton and Gavin Carney in foul trouble early, and both fouled out, but the Campers never seemed to consistently pinpoint those mismatches in the half-court despite a combined 35 points by Michael and Shaffer.
“We were coming down and doing exactly what we talked about not wanting to do,” Eirich said. “We were going one-on-one. We weren’t getting into sets. We talk about wanting to get the ball to Zach and Dylan, every game.
“We’ve been preaching that all year, and today we decided to do something different. We found out again, different doesn’t work. What we were successful for, we didn’t do today, so we lost.”
Burner gave credit to his perimeter defense — which also limited Allegany standout Isaiah Fields, who averages 17 points a game, to just six — as keys to slowing what the Campers do best.
Spencer and Daniels were the primary defenders on Fields.
“Us defending the ball on the perimeter, speeding them up, they didn’t really get into their offense. They were running into a wall around the elbows,” he said. “It made it a little difficult for them to get it inside.”
While Allegany’s season was still a success by most metrics, the Campers came up short of their ultimate goal. The loss hurts more with the ensuing loss of a full starting five of seniors in Michael, Shaffer, Fields, Smith and Blake Powell.
“Our goals are always to win things, and we didn’t win anything,” Eirich said. “Most people look and say, ‘You were 20-5. You had a great year.’ Not by our standards. Maybe by some other teams, not by us.”
Fort Hill will live to play another day, advancing to the state tournament for the second straight year.
“Our kids are excited,” Burner said. “We want to make it back to the Final Four. I think we’ll be prepared.”