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By Jay Spivey

For the Clemmons Courier

The top-seeded West Forsyth boys basketball team didn’t win the Central Piedmont 4-A tournament, but it has a chance starting on Tuesday night in the first round of the NCHSAA Class 4-A tournament. 

West Forsyth lost to Mount Tabor 63-55 in this past Friday’s conference-tournament championship at Reagan. However, West Forsyth was announced as the No. 2 seed in the 4-A West bracket and is set to open the state tournament at home on Tuesday night against No. 31 Waxhaw Marvin Ridge.

“I feel good about it,” Coach Marlon Brim said. “I think we played well enough to get the 2 seed.” 

West Forsyth is one of five Central Piedmont 4-A teams – No. 9 Mount Tabor, No. 11 East Forsyth, No. 14 Davie County, and No. 25 Reagan – that will be playing in the state tournament.

“Every year, our conference may be the best boys 4-A conference in the West,” Brim said. “But it also goes to show that our strength of schedule and our nonconference was pretty good too because we always know that our conference is going to be really tough.” 

And just like every team in the state that will be playing in the state tournament, it’s a new season and everybody is restarting at 0 and 0. 

“You’ve just got to take it one game at a time and you’ve got to be ready night in and night out,” Brim said. “You have no more season. You lose and it’s over.” 

Marvin Ridge is 11-14 overall and finished 6-2 in the Southern Carolina 4-A behind Weddington, which is 21-5 overall and 8-0 in the conference. Brim noted they were a typical 31 seed, but said that his team was not looking past them, adding that West Forsyth was looking to avoid the University of Virginia’s example from 2018, when they became the first one seed to lose to a 16 seed, Maryland-Baltimore County, in the NCAA tournament.

If West Forsyth wins its game on Tuesday it would play at home on Friday night against the winner of No. 18 South Caldwell at No. 15 Southwest Guilford. 

Even though teams don’t want to get too far ahead of themselves, West Forsyth and Mount Tabor could play each other in the third round next Tuesday night in Clemmons. That would be the fifth meeting between the two teams this season if that were to happen.

West Forsyth won the two regular-season conference games, but Mount Tabor won in the Frank Spencer Classic before Christmas as well as in the conference tournament championship this past Friday. 

However, for that to happen, in addition to West Forsyth winning its first two playoffs games, Mount Tabor would have to defeat No. 24 Greensboro Grimsley at home on Tuesday and go on the road and defeat the winner of No. 26 East Mecklenburg at No. 7 Watauga.

“You’ve got to play the game,” Brim said. “And that’s why I tell my kids, we talk about it every day even on Tuesday, Friday games, every game is one game at a time. And no matter if we’re favored or have a favorable schedule, we’ve got to play like we’re not the favorite. We’ve got to play like we’re the underdogs trying to make a name and prove (ourselves), show people how good we are.” 

As far as the tournament, No. 2 Mount Tabor and No. 1 West Forsyth faced each other for the fourth time this past Friday at jam-packed Reagan, and Mount Tabor stormed from behind to win 63-55 with the help of 22 points from Will Konin.

The Titans led 37-24 with 3:45 left in the fourth quarter after a jumper by Jacari Brim, Brim’s son. However, the Spartans (22-5) went on a 12-3 run to end the quarter, and Koonin nailed a 3-pointer with 5.8 seconds left to trim the Titans’ lead to 40-36.

“It gave them momentum,” Marlon Brim said. “We still had the momentum. We still had the lead, but he just hit threes at the right time and gave them the momentum to overcome. So, we still had our chances. It just wasn’t our night.”

West Forsyth stretched the lead to 45-38 after Jacari Brim made the second of two free-throw attempts with 6:25 left. However, Mount Tabor came right back and trimmed it to 48-47 with 3:21 left after Amare Robinson hit a follow. With 2:50 left, Koonin nailed a 3-pointer to give Mount Tabor a 50-48 lead.

Jordan Tate of West Forsyth converted a three-point play with 2:41 left to retake a 52-51 lead. The lead seesawed after Koonin made a layup with 2:33 left to give Mount Tabor a 52-51 lead, but Jacari Brim answered with a jumper with 2:24 left to make it 53-52.

“I just think our defensive rebounding hurt us,” Marlon Brim said. “We’ve done a good job of that all year, but tonight we didn’t do a good job of rebounding the basketball defensively.”

Jacari Brim led the Titans with 19 points and Tate finished with 14. 

Mount Tabor took the lead for good after Snook Peterkin nailed a 3-pointer with 1:51 left to make it 55-53.  

“I didn’t think we reacted well, but that’s because we hadn’t been in that situation like that in a while,” Marlon Brim said. “We didn’t play our best and that was tonight.”

Peterkin, who was named the conference’s player of the year after the game, finished with 19 points, and Robinson chipped in with 14.

The Spartans finished the fourth quarter six of eight from the free-throw line to seal the win. Meanwhile, the Titans finished the game shooting 13 for 22 from the free-throw line.

“I think we could have stretched it out, and I think that was the biggest thing,” Marlon Brim said. “Missing free throws late and our inability to rebound defensively late. We beat ourselves.”

In Monday’s first-round game in Clemmons, West Forsyth routed eighth-seeded Glenn 83-31 with the help of 15 points by Jacari Brim. Kamauri Manuel added 11 points and Max Skillman contributed 10.

In Tuesday’s semifinals at Reagan, West Forsyth upended No. 4 Davie County 61-50 with the help of 18 points by Jacari Brim. Manuel chipped in with 16 points and Princeton Scott added 10.

As for the West Forsyth girls, they just missed out on making the playoffs as announced Sunday night. West Forsyth finished its season 12-13 overall and 6-8 in the conference in its first season with Coach Johnathan Gainey at the helm.

West Forsyth dropped to the No. 6 seed for the conference tournament after losing to Mount Tabor in the regular-season finale.

West Forsyth opened the tournament at Reagan last Monday night and lost 54-47, which turned out to be West Forsyth’s last game of the season.

Reagan led 15-9 after the first quarter and 27-22 at halftime. Reagan led 40-28 after the third quarter.