Southern wins 2022 Area Championship

Apr. 16—As early as the second game of the season, Southern head coach Tom Bosley said it mattered how the Rams finished, not where they started.

Southern ended with the West Region I title and a 13-9 record against a tough schedule, and for that, the Rams were voted 2021-22 Area Champions by a vote of local sportswriters.

The panel, which voted 5-1 in favor of Southern over Mountain Ridge, included Jeff Landes, Kyle Bennett and Alex Rychwalski (Cumberland Times-News), Chapin Jewell (Mineral Daily News Tribune), Nick Carroll (Hampshire Review) and Trevor King (Garrett County Republican).

"We got good in the year when we were healthy in the end," Bosley said. "We always gear our season for, it doesn't matter how good you are in December, it matters how good you are in March.

"Beginning of the season, I didn't think we were the best. ... It was a good group of seniors, and the team accepted the challenge and played as hard as they could until it ended in Baltimore."

That group of seniors was led by Area Player of the Year Isaac Upole (18.3 points, 10 rebounds a game), All-Area first-team performer Gabe Hebb (16.1 points, four assists a game) and honorable mention Ethan Glotfelty (11.6 points a game, 38 3-pointers).

Southern won five of its first six games to begin the season before dropping five of its next seven. The latter contest of that skid, a 60-57 upset defeat to Fort Hill, proved to be a wake-up call of sorts, as the Rams won 6 of 8 before falling to Edmondson-Westside in the state quarterfinals.

Southern got hot at the right time, defeating Allegany, 56-49, in the region semis and Mountain Ridge, 64-57, in overtime to get to states.

Bosley credited Southern's schedule for preparing the team for the end of the year. All but one of the Rams' losses (Fort Hill) were to teams with winning records. Great Mills (14-7), Allegany (16-5), Francis Scott Key (15-6), Notre Dame (13-10) and Edmondson-Westside (21-3) all finished above .500.

The Rams' best non-conference victory came against Uniontown (14-9) in the Southern Snowball Classic, and they won two out of three against Mountain Ridge (18-4).

Southern is the first team with nine losses to be crowned Area Champion. Three teams have lost eight games.

"The difficult teams made us better when it came to tournament time," Bosley said. "The end of the year, we were down at 12 at the half against Mountain Ridge. And yet, it was a pretty easy adjustment, fix a couple things, and be finishers.

"There was no panic. They're prideful in what they do, and the schedule helped with that. It put us in those situations because we played a lot of close games. We didn't always win them, but it made us better."

Allegany finished third behind Southern and Mountain Ridge in the final Area Top 5 with a 16-5 record. Hampshire (12-10) was fourth and Keyser (7-18) was fifth. Fort Hill and Northern received votes.

The Campers, which return most of their offensive production, are early favorites entering the 2022-23 campaign.

Alex Rychwalski is a sports reporter at the Cumberland Times-News. Follow him on Twitter @arychwal.