Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, WV

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October 15, 2009

Lamb leads Oak Hill to win

By BRIAN WOODSON

BLUEFIELD, Va. — Doran Lamb scored 31 points for Oak Hill Academy against Bluefield College on Thursday night at the Dome Gymnasium.

Today, Lamb will be on a plane, heading to Lawrence, Kan., trying to decide where his collegiate home will be. Such is the life of a basketball player at the prep hoops factory in tiny Mouth of Wilson, Va.

“I have put work into it. The more work you put in, the better stuff happens for you,” said Lamb, a senior from Laurelton, N.Y., who will choose from among such college basketball powers as Kansas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Connecticut and Arizona. “Just work hard every night, put shots up in the morning before school, and it pays off.”

Rated as one of the top shooting guard prospects in the nation, Lamb displayed that touch often against a mixture of Bluefield College varsity and junior varsity players, leading the Warriors to a 114-92 win in the First Annual Conncert Classic to benefit the Substance Abuse Taskforce in Rural Appalachia.

Roscoe Smith added 24 points for Oak Hill, while Pe’Shon Howard tossed in 23, including a team-leading 14 in the opening half for the Warriors.

“It’s good for us. We have practiced about 10 days now and I wasn’t sure what we would look like tonight,” Oak Hill coach Steve Smith said. “We hadn’t gotten much in except for our man-to-man defense and offense, thank goodness they didn’t play any zone. They accommodated that way.

“They play similar to us, they like to get up and down the floor, they shoot a lot of 3s. We’ve got some things to work on so it was good for us..”

Bluefield, which played 13 players, including varsity members Brian Daniels, Ted O’boute, Jonathan Dula, Carlton Shumake and Ed Folden, led early 2-0, tied the score at 4-4, and then the Warriors scored 14 straight points to take an 18-4 lead.

First-year Rams’ head coach Richard Morgan turned the coaching reins over for the night to junior varsity skipper Keith “Mister” Jennings, a former 5-foot-7 point guard and star at East Tennessee State, who also played three seasons for the Golden State Warriors.

“I think we’ve got some areas we need to work on, but at the same time I thought we got what we wanted out of this to see how they would react to the fans and how they would react to the other team,” Morgan said. “Overall I think they definitely handled it well. I thought they could have broken in the first half and they didn’t.

“They came back and played pretty well. I was really impressed with our guys tonight, their performance. I think some of the guys got to see what it’s really about on the college level.”

Bluefield rallied from the 14-point deficit and actually narrowed the margin to six, 42-36, on a 3 by O’boute, but the Warriors took a 52-42 lead into the break. Lamb scored 11 of Oak Hill’s 19 points in a 19-9 run to open the second half to help the Warriors pull away.

Oak Hill’s biggest lead was 25, 85-60, on a basket by Marco Porcher with 10:19 left on the clock.

“It’s good to see those guys out there. Oak Hill is still Oak Hill,” said Morgan, of an event that ended with a slam dunk competition. “We’re going to make this an annual event so I’m really pleased and blessed and fortunate. We got out of it like I said, we learned something, but at the same time nobody got injured.”

Dula led Bluefield off the bench with 19 points, including 11 in the opening half, along with three of Bluefield’s 10 3s. Daniels tossed in 18, O’boute added 14 and Jewuan Wynn canned 12.

Smith has compiled a remarkable 758-45 record in 25 seasons at Oak Hill, including seven mythical national titles, and six runner-up finishes.

The secret to his success?

“I’ve been there a long time and it’s the players, trust me. John Wooden didn’t win at UCLA until he got players,” Smith said. “It’s the guys we’ve had, we’ve had 26 kids go on to play in the NBA so it’s an awful lot of talent to coach each year...”

Even the players’ parents are talented. Oak Hill junior Keith Hornsby scored six points. His father is Grammy Award winning entertainer Bruce Hornsby.

—Contact Brian Woodson

at bwoodson@bdtonline.com

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