Hood
- Jan 4, 2023
- 7 min read
Hood Blazers (6-5) vs. Waynesburg Yellow Jackets (3-6)
Friday, December 30, 2022 @ 2:00 PM
Frederick, MD
Ronald J. Volpe Athletic Center
THE SCHOOL
Hood College is a private liberal arts college in Frederick, Maryland. Founded in 1893, the school currently enrolls just over 2,000 students. Hood was established by the Reformed Church of the United States as a women's college and has only been fully coeducational since 2003.
The Blazers compete in the Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC) in NCAA Division III. The MAC is so big (with 18 institutions) that they have to split into two conferences for basketball. The MAC Freedom comprises schools in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, while the MAC Commonwealth has teams from southern Pennsylvania and Maryland. Therefore, Hood is in the MAC Commonwealth. Hood's men's basketball teams is reigning champion of the MAC Commonwealth, which is a fact the PA announcer must have repeated a dozen times.
Waynesburg University is a private Presbyterian university in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. The Yellow Jackets compete in the Presidents' Athletic Conference (PAC), also in Division III. In their biggest athletic claim to fame, on September 30, 1939, Waynesburg's football team competed in the first football game broadcast on TV. In their game at Fordham, the Yellow Jackets were seen on a New York NBC affiliate by about 1,000 people.
Waynesburg's nickname is the Yellow Jackets. Naturally, their colors are black and... orange. This is so frustrating. Yellow is in the name! If your color is orange, get a different mascot.
THE TOWN
Frederick is about 55 miles northwest along Interstate 270. Ideally, it should be a simple drive, but it's a fairly high-traffic thoroughfare. It took about an hour-and-a-half to get there, and nearly two hours to get back home.
I've previously spent some time in Frederick, and it's a nice place. Allison and I were out on a drive and we saw that Frederick's local summer league baseball team, the Keys, were having their Parks and Recreation night. Jim O'Heir, who plays Jerry Gergich on the show, was there to sign autographs. I have no idea how the Keys convinced him to come to their baseball stadium, but we decided this was a delightfully silly way to spend an evening.
With a population of nearly 80,000 people, Frederick is one of the largest cities in Maryland. They have a cool historic downtown area with lots of lovely shops, restaurants, and a couple theaters. When I visited previously, this area was packed with people. While the town was a little quieter this go-around, Frederick still seems like a splendid community. It's in a sweet spot where DC and Baltimore are both accessible, but you certainly don't feel like you're in either city. I know of a couple people who live in Frederick and commute to the DC-area.
Frederick's most famous resident is none other than Francis Scott Key, who I may or may not have badmouthed in the last write-up so all apologies to Mr. Key and the City of Frederick.
Hood's campus is just a couple blocks west from Frederick's downtown area. It's exactly what you expect from a small private university in Maryland; neoclassical brick buildings and bright green lawns dominate the landscape. Students were on Christmas break, so the only folks on campus were older people out on a walk and kids playing in the sunshine. Hood has a charming wisteria pergola in one of their open spaces. While I thought it looked cool here, I'm sure it's stunning when it blooms.
The Ronald J. Volpe Athletic Center is a new-ish facility, having been Hood's home for student recreation since 2011. A fairly grand entranceway for D-III leads into an open lobby. Windows surround the complex, giving the lobby, hallway, and offices lots of natural light. The basketball court is to your right. The gym itself is nothing special -- there's little room between bleachers and court, the scoreboards were likely outdated in 2011, and the overhead lighting disagreed with my phone camera -- but I think it's certainly above-average for Division III in this area.
THE GAME
Students were on break and this game took place at 2:00 during a workday for many. For these reasons, it was clear Hood didn't think this would be a well-attended game. They didn't put up their concession table and only brought out one side of sideline seating.
Imagine their surprise that this was the highest attended game of the season thus far.
Now, having been there, I can't say I am certain there were really 587 attendees as the box score claims, but there was a great crowd nonetheless. Even without students, Frederick locals came out in bunches. One of the best atmospheres in this kind of project are games that feel like social gatherings. At Hood, pods of people throughout the bleachers intermingled with each other and cheered/hollered/argued with officials together for the whole game. There were parents of players, recent alumni, senior citizens with grandkids, and everyone in between. 587 might be a slight exaggeration, but a crowd of 500 engaged fans beats 5,000 on their phones every time.
~~
This is my second time watching Hood this season. Back in November, I saw them lose a close game at Catholic University.
Hood is a predictable team. They have easily identifiable strategies on both offense and defense that they do not waver from. On offense, they go fast. No one holds the ball for more than a few seconds as they rapidly pass the ball around the court, constantly looking for an open three-pointer or path to the basket. Hood doesn't shoot many two-point jumpers; nearly all their shots are threes or within a couple feet of the hoop.
On defense, the Blazers play a 2-3 zone with a three-quarter court press. They try to trap the ball-handler near midcourt after each inbound pass. I've watched Hood for 80 minutes now, and they have not swayed from this strategy for a possession.
There are two sides to such a stringent philosophy. On one side, if you're having an off-day or if the other team breaks your defense, you don't have a plan B and it's hard to recover. But on the other hand, when everything is clicking and everyone has bought in, you can be nearly unstoppable. And today, Hood was unstoppable.
The Blazers scored on 8 points in their first three possessions. At the first timeout with 15:40 left in the first half, Hood already had a 15-4 lead and their point guard, Trumaine Strickland (#3), had 10 points of his own. Shortly afterward, #5, Jevon Yarbrough scored two consecutive threes, and just two-and-a-half minutes later (at 13:10), the Blazers led 26-7. Not even seven minutes in, it was already getting ugly.
But it would get a lot uglier. Waynesburg never figured out how to beat the 2-3 trap, they didn't hit a three-pointer until eight minutes into the game, and they threw the ball out of bounds on multiple occasions. Offensively and defensively, Hood rendered the Yellow Jackets inept. Hood hit the 50-point mark with 2:30 left in the first half and they entered the half ahead 58-24. The Blazers were 10-16 from 3 in the first, while the Yellow Jackets had 7 turnovers in just the last 5 minutes.
And it got even uglier. Hood's first basket of the second half was a banked-in three-pointer by #20, Christopher Smalls, in the first ten seconds. By the 18:40 mark, the Blazers led by 40, 64-24. Waynesburg did not hit a field goal until the 11:40 mark, and by then, they trailed by 50.
Hood took a 60-point lead, 92-32 with 8:22 left, and they soon hit the century-mark, leading 100-37 with 5:30 remaining. At this point, Waynesburg trailed by 63 points, but somehow, that doesn't even sound as bad as it truly was. 100-37 looks like a typo; it is hard to believe it could come to this.
If you're a Waynesburg coach or player prior to tipoff, you probably knew there was good chance you would lose this game. Waynesburg has not had a particularly good season and Hood is a good team -- better than their record indicates. In your gameplan, you realize that it will be difficult, but if Hood has a bad shooting day or if their defense is sluggish, you could possibly chip away little by little throughout the game to make things interesting. Best case - the Blazers play poorly and you pull the upset. Worst case - they don't and you lose.
But your worst nightmare about this game cannot prepare you for losing 100-37 with five minutes and thirty seconds remaining. It's unfathomable. It's unimaginable. But it's happening, and you have no choice but to endure it.
With just under one minute left, Hood's #22, Troy Fulton, hit the twentieth three-point shot for the Blazers, just one behind the school record. On the other end of the court, Yellow Jacket #25, Hayes Ramirez hit a wild three-pointer, got fouled, and made the free throw. With forty-six seconds left in this blowout, something finally went Waynesburg's way.
By the end of the game, thirty-five players received playing time as both coaches emptied their benches entirely. No Hood Blazer logged more than nineteen minutes, but 13 players played ten or more minutes. No Waynesburg Yellow Jacket scored double-digit points. Trumaine Strickland, the star of the first half, scored 16 points in only 15 minutes, while Hood's #25, Ian Pugh, had 14 points and 6 rebounds in just 16 minutes.
Final: Hood 109, Waynesburg 51
Three additional notes about this game:
1) When the shot clock winds down for the home team, the crowd sometimes tries to help out by counting down the seconds as they tick away. However, they sometimes abuse this tactic for the away team by counting down "5...4...3...2...1," when there is plenty of time on the shot clock. This is an attempt to confuse the away team. It almost never works.
There were three students sitting down the row from me who did this repeatedly. Probably a dozen or so times over the course of the game, which is overkill.
But here's the thing: Waynesburg fell for it multiple times. On several occasions, a Yellow Jacket put up a bad shot with plenty of time left because these kids were counting. I've seen this happen, but never multiple times in one game.
2) Late in the game, after it was all backups for both teams, Waynesburg missed a shot and got an offensive board that led to two points. A very enthusiastic fan behind me yelled, "y'all gotta learn how to rebound!"
At this point, her team was leading by almost seventy points.
3) There isn't a lot of good, affordable barbecue in Washington, D.C. If there is, I haven't found it yet.
However, if you go out to Frederick, I can recommend Mackie's Southern Barbecue. With tender pork, a sweet sauce, and surprisingly good potato salad, Mackie's is one of the best I've had this far north. I would have taken a picture but I was too hungry.
And for an additional slice of home, Mackie's also had this:
That's Alabama football. In Frederick, Maryland.
Specifically, it's a photo of Craig Turner scoring a touchdown in the 1982 Liberty Bowl versus Illinois. This was Bear Bryant's last game, which took place forty years and one day before this photo was taken.
Why did Mackie's hang this on the wall? A quick Google search shows that Craig Turner is a current resident of Frederick. He must be a frequent customer of the restaurant, so he signed a picture for them.
The more you travel, the smaller the world gets.
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