With 1:48 left in the fourth quarter and the result all but decided in Saturday’s Maryland Public Secondary School Athletic Association (MPSSAA) Boys Basketball 4A Championship, Walt Whitman High’s Thomas Farrell was subbed out of his team’s matchup against Frederick.
The senior hugged three teammates as another prepared to take a free-throw, embraced head coach Chris Lun as he stepped off the court at the XFINITY Center at the University of Maryland, then proceeded to hug every player on the bench as the Vikings supporters briefly chanted his name.
As the seconds trickled down, Farrell’s last wearing a Vikings uniform, in Walt Whitman’s 74-49 defeat to Frederick, his face was red with emotion as he came to terms with a disappointing end to his high school career. Yet Farrell continued to clap and cheer on his teammates until the final buzzer sounded.
“I knew coming into this game it was going to be my final game, win or lose,” Farrell said in the post-game press conference. “Just to take it in for one last time felt pretty good. … It hits different when you’re saying goodbye to all of them for the last time.”
Saturday’s loss to Frederick, the fourth seed in the 4A bracket, marked a depressing conclusion to a remarkable campaign for both Farrell and second-seeded Walt Whitman from Bethesda.
In his final game, Farrell finished with only 13 points, shooting 33.3% from both the field and beyond the arc. Entering Saturday’s game against Frederick, Farrell, who set the Whitman season record for 3-pointers in a season, was averaging more than 17 points per game and shooting 46% from the field and 42.5% from three.
Despite the ending being different from what he envisioned, Farrell was upbeat during his time with the press and reflected on his final high school basketball season positively.
“As a team this year, we played our style of basketball. The past two years, it felt like we only had one guy who could score. This year it felt like we had five guys who could impact the game,” said Farrell, who was one of three Vikings to average more than 10 points per game this season. “It’s awesome to get here, it sucks that we lost, but just to play in this type of atmosphere … is awesome.”
The Vikings finished the season 21-7, just a win shy of its second state title in program history. The team’s lone state title came in 2006, Lun’s second season at the helm.
Walt Whitman had a strong regular season, only missing out on a spot in the Montgomery County Championship game due to a coin toss. With victories over Winston Churchill and Bethesda-Chevy Chase high schools, Walt Whitman won its first regional title since 2016, and its fourth during Lun’s tenure. In the state semifinal against Richard Montgomery High School, a triple at the buzzer from Will Shapiro–one that Lun speculated to be the biggest shot in program history and which landed the team on ESPN’s SportsCenter–clinched the Vikings’ place in Saturday’s title game.
“They were by far the better team, but that does not take away from what we experienced as a group,” Lun said. “It’s very difficult to get here and not everyone gets the chance to end their season in this spot.”
After starting the game on a 10-3 run, spearheaded by five points from Farrell, Walt Whitman was trailing by three at the end of the first quarter. After being outscored 22-7 in the second, the game felt largely decided. The Cadets led by as much as 25 in the second half, as a combination of a size advantage and an incredible shooting display allowed Frederick to dominate.
Elwyne Wordlaw (19 points), Ivan Quijada (17 points) and David Dorsey (14 points), who was two rebounds shy of a double-double, carried the offensive load for Frederick. In addition to his 17 points, Quijada had four steals and six rebounds.
Frederick shot 12-of-21 from beyond the arc and 58.3% from the field as a whole.
“When they shoot like that they are very difficult to beat,” Lun said. “We knew coming in people were saying they were the probably the best public school team in the state and tonight they showed it.”
As he was walking into the tunnel, Titian DeRosa looked at the bleachers and yelled, “We’ll be back.” The junior guard, who paced the Vikings with 20 points, leads a strong contingent of returning players for Walt Whitman that will be eyeing the state championship that evaded them this season.
Of the five players who started in Saturday’s loss, the only one graduating is Farrell. In addition to DeRosa, Evan Brown, who had 12 points and five rebounds on Saturday, as well as Sean Curran, a 6-foot-5 center that averaged more than eight points and eight rebounds a game this season are slated to return next season. Hayden Walsh, one of the team’s more accurate long distance shooters, figures to retain his place in the starting lineup.
“I love the positivity and thinking that we can do it,” Lun said. “That basically starts for us in the offseason. We have a good group coming back and we’ll be excited to get after it again.”