Fans of the Walt Whitman High School Vikings had a good reason to cause a ruckus at Montgomery Blair High School during the first three-and-a-half quarters of Wednesday’s Maryland Public Secondary School Athletic Association (MPSSAA) 4A semifinal basketball game against Richard Montgomery High School.
But in the last four minutes, Richard Montgomery’s Rockets, the sixth-seed in the 4A bracket, neutralized the Vikings.
With less than five seconds left, Richard Montgomery’s Tavares Vaughn-Cooper had one more free-throw, with a chance to push the Rockville-based school’s lead to three points. His attempt clanked off the rim and into the hands of Vikings guard Titian DeRosa. The junior guard from Bethesda’s Whitman High tossed the ball up the floor to sophomore Will Shapiro. With less than a second on the clock, Shapiro heaved a desperation 3-pointer. The ball bounced between the rim and fell into the hoop.
Immediately, the fans who had nearly watched Walt Whitman’s state championship dreams slip away rushed the court to celebrate as the second-seeded Vikings stole a spot in the state championship with a 67-66 victory.
“When I first hit it, it was surreal,” Shapiro said minutes after the game had ended. “I didn’t even think the experience was real. I just saw the crowd storm and I was getting trampled, it was just a great feeling.”
On a Walt Whitman team littered with offensive production, Shapiro’s role is the opposite. He was eighth on the team in scoring, barely averaging three points a game, and had only converted on seven triples entering Wednesday’s game against Richard Montgomery, according to the team statistics page on MaxPreps.
His responsibility Wednesday was to defend Richard Montgomery’s most dangerous scorer, Dante Mayo Jr., and be ready should an open shot come to him. An opportunity for a shot did not come until the final play of the game, but when it arose, Shapiro was ready.
“I’m just ready for the moment. I knew when Titian [DeRosa] came up with that board, he was going to make the unselfish play to me, and I just got it and threw it up,” Shapiro said.
Walt Whitman head coach Chris Lun called it the biggest shot in program history.
“I’m not going to make up some fancy story that we drew up some great play,” Lun said. “You need some luck to get to a state championship game. Titian made a great pass and Will just let it go.”
Richard Montgomery trailed by 14 points heading into the fourth quarter. When the Rockets deployed a more active press defense, Walt Whitman had trouble combatting the Rockets’ speed. With 17.6 seconds left, Richard Montgomery took a 65-64 lead, its first of the game.
When the buzzer sounded, multiple Rocket players stood stuck in place on the floor as a sea of celebration surrounded them. It wasn’t long before others started crying. David Breslaw, the team’s head coach, said he was stuck in a state of disbelief.
“So few people will ever feel that kind of instant shock,” he said. “The fact that they experienced this knowing that they are going to get through it is going to be a reference point for all the challenges they feel in life.”
Thomas Farrell (17 points), Sean Curran (16 points) and Evan Brown (13 points) led Walt Whitman in scoring. Dante Mayo Jr. (24 points) and Vaughn-Cooper (17 points) combined for 22 points in the fourth quarter to lead the Rockets.
Whitman’s lone state championship came in 2006, the second season of Lun’s tenure as head coach of the program. The Vikings will face fourth-seeded Frederick High School on Saturday at 8 p.m. at the XFINITY Center at the University of Maryland.
“These guys deserve it. They’re a great group, they play together, they really like playing together, the families all get along,” Lun said. “It’s a really special program we have at Whitman. … We’re just going to show up, play team basketball and do the best we can.”