Blake, Pigrom Go From Zero to Second

But Montgomery's Title Drought Continues: Walbrook 45, Blake 38

Kevan Creppy, right, and Blake won 23 games to earn a berth in the Maryland 4A boys' final, but Walbrook's Rodney Spruill, left, led his team to the victory. (Kevin Clark -- The Washington Post)

With four seconds left in last night's Maryland 4A boys' basketball championship game, reality began to set in for Blake senior guard Brandon Driver.

A referee's whistle had stopped play for a Blake foul with the Bengals down five points, and Driver bent over and buried his face in his hands while his teammates walked down the court, stunned.

Two free throws and a desperation heave later, Walbrook of Baltimore had won its first state championship, 45-38, in front of 8,500 at the University of Maryland's Comcast Center, and the Bengals were left to ponder a season that ended one step away from their year-long goal.

"From day one, we knew we were supposed to be here," Driver said. "We knew we worked harder than anybody else to get here. We shouldn't have gone out this way, on a losing note. . . . We expected to win."

Blake led 31-27 after senior Kevan Creppy converted a three-point play with 4 minutes 18 seconds left in the third quarter, but the Bengals were outscored 18-7 the rest of the way. Blake, which shot 52.4 percent in the first half, made 5 of 17 shots (29.4 percent) in the second half.

"We hit a stretch in the second half where we just couldn't buy a bucket," Bengals Coach Damon Pigrom said.

Blake trailed 39-35 with 5:26 left but cut the lead to one on a free throw by Creppy and a leaning jumper by Jermaine Cooper with 3:59 remaining. The Bengals had two more possessions when they were down by a point, but they committed turnovers on both.

With 56 seconds to play, Walbrook junior Rodney Spruill (team-high 12 points) scored on a drive to the basket to put the Warriors up 41-38. Blake then missed two shots, the second a three-pointer with about 20 seconds to play. Walbrook rebounded the ball, and Blake committed a foul to stop the clock. But because it was only the Bengals' fourth foul of the half, they had to commit three more before the Warriors went to the foul line.

By the time Walbrook did, there were 11 seconds to play, and junior guard Marc Davis hit both ends of his one-and-one opportunity to give the Warriors their five-point cushion.

Blake, which was playing in the first state final in school history, finished the year 23-4 and just one step from completing an improbable rise from new program to the state's pinnacle.

Blake opened in 1998 with only freshmen and sophomores and fielded its first varsity team in the 1999-2000 season. That team went 0-22, and the next two teams combined to win 19 games. Since then, however, the Bengals have gone 63-13 and won two region championships.

"When we were 0-22, I would have never imagined that we would be here," said Pigrom, Blake's coach since the school opened. "If somebody said, 'You'll be playing at Comcast,' I would have said, 'What are you smoking?' Seriously, that's how far-fetched it seemed."

The Bengals' loss, combined with Bethesda-Chevy Chase's heart-breaking overtime loss to Randallstown in the Class 3A final, continued Montgomery County's title drought. Blake is the third consecutive team from the county to lose in the 4A state final, and no team from the county has won a state title at any level since Magruder won the 4A crown in 2001.

Walbrook, Baltimore's top-ranked team, finished 26-2 with a 16-game winning streak.

Senior Kelvin Bright led the Bengals with a game-high 15 points.