PRINCE FREDERICK -- What do you say to a team that plays its heart out for 32 minutes and still falls four points short in the school's first trip to the region playoffs?
Brad Wilson didn't have an answer?
That's why the North County coach stood outside the visitors' locker room last night, following his team's 87-83 loss to Calvert in the first round of the Class 4A East Region playoffs.
"I don't know what to say to them; it's going to be tough," said Wilson. "We scored 58 points in the second half and they still beat us. Tonight, they were the better team."
For their superior effort, the Cavaliers of Calvert County earned a date with top-seeded Arundel, which was awarded a first-round bye. The two teams will square off at 7 tomorrow night in Gambrills.
"We were right where we wanted to be," said North County junior Maurice Bowie, who led the Knights with 28 points and seven rebounds. "We were clicking, but our shots weren't falling. I tried to pick myself and the team up and everyone seemed like they were putting out, but they just beat us at the foul line at the end."
Calvert (16-7), which competes in the Southern Maryland Athletic Conference, took its biggest lead of the game midway through the third quarter when Sean Jones hit a jumper to put the Cavaliers ahead by 44-28.
The fifth-seeded Knights, however, did not give up.
North County (13-10), which lost its 10 games this year by an average margin of about five points, hustled its way back into it and cut the margin to one when Cornelius Berley (19 points) hit a jump shot with one second left in the third.
The fourth-seeded Cavaliers started the fourth quarter with a 9-1 run that put the Knights back on the defensive. North County managed to pull back to within 67-64 when Bowie completed a three-point play at the foul line with 5:14 left and the Knights trailed by only two when Bowie sank a jumper with 1:48 remaining, but that was as close as they would get.
Calvert, which connected on 21 of 36 shots from the foul line, hit 10 of 15 free throws down the stretch. Even the foul shots that didn't fall wound up in the hands of the Cavaliers, forcing the Knights to foul them again.
Vashawne Gross finished as Calvert's leading scorer with 19 points and Landon Collins had 15.
Lou Brown, one of three seniors on Wilson's squad, had 15 points, and seniors Tweety Barton and Reno Owens finished with eight and six, respectively. Owens could have added to his total, but he injured his ankle on a dunk late in the second quarter .
"We didn't shoot well in the first half [10 of 27] but we didn't quit and we kept going ," said Wilson. "A shot here falls and a shot there falls and they miss a couple free throws and it's a different ballgame. We just got beaten, that's all."