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Time for the 19th annual St. Marys Invitational

By Aaron Lee 9 min read

ST. MARYS -- An annual Pleasants County tradition continues this Thursday through Saturday when the 19th edition of the St. Marys Invitational Tournament will take place, bringing together four boys and girls basketball teams for a bracketed tournament.

St. Marys, Moorefield and Ritchie County are all competing on both the girls and boys side. Belpre's girls and Roane County's boys will round out the bracket.

The boys and girls schedules swap every year, and this year the girls will kick things off at 6 p.m. on Thursday when Belpre takes on Moorefield. At 7:30, the Blue Devils will take on Ritchie County.

On Friday, the boys preliminary games will take place. Moorefield and Roane County will face off at 6 p.m., and St. Marys and Ritchie County will play at 7:30 p.m..

Saturday's schedule begins with both of the consolation games, with the losers of the two girls games playing at 1:30 and the losing boys teams playing at 3:30. The girls championship will take place at 5:30, followed by the boys championship at 7:30.

On the girls side, St. Marys is 10-3 at this point in the season, earning them the #5 spot in the AP poll. Of the Blue Devils' three losses, only one has happened against a West Virginia team. St. Marys' lone mountain state loss came at the hands of rival #3 Williamstown by a final of 51-48. The team's other losses came by way of Frontier (56-49) and Fort Frye (48-23), two talented Ohio programs.

Of St. Mary's 10 wins, four have come against top-ten teams in class AA. The Blue Devils have already bested plenty of teams they could encounter later in the season, including #6 Wheeling Central (76-53), #7 Parkersburg Catholic (41-25), #9 Ravenswood (68-58) and #10 Charleston Catholic (68-29).

St. Marys girls head coach Fred King thinks the team's losses will pay dividends by the end of the season, "We feel like we're where we should be at this particular point in time. We work on things that kinda hurt us early in the season that we did not do very well with, just because the teams that we've played put us in that position. That's the reason why we play the Fort Fryes of the world, because number one, they put you where you think you ain't, and number two, we get film on them so we can watch what they do and we can become a better team by doing what they do. I'm 72 years old, but I'm still a thief. If I get something from someone else, I'm going to tell it to my girls. That's what coaching is all about, trying to improve your squad."

He described the process of tinkering with a team throughout a 22-game season, "We've been tested early in all three of our losses, we really learned a lot about ourselves, and that's what's important. You can't just keep on, you have to buy into it and I think our girls are really buying in. What we're trying to do with this team, you know, this team is a little different from the first year I was here, and it's also different from the team we had last year. A lot of similarities, but at the same time, we gotta fine tune it, get your screwdriver out. Your carburetor got a little bit of a sputter in it, well, you gotta adjust the oxygen a little bit and the gas intake. Once you get a smooth ride, you keep going until someone throws a crescent wrench in the carburetor again, and you gotta go back and redo it. So that's where we're at. I'm very proud of our girls and what they've done so far."

Of the 13 games the team has played, no stretch has been more impressive than what the team pulled off from Jan. 2-5, "You look at that first week in January, we came back on the second and went to Fort Frye, then we played Parkersburg Catholic at Parkersburg Catholic on the fourth which was two nights later, then one night later we played Wheeling Central at our place, so three very good teams back-to-back-to-back, and we were fortunate enough to win two of 'em. So that built a little bit of confidence, and at the same time, we know what's out there now, and we know we can't take any games off, that we've gotta be up against it every night, because we do have a very difficult schedule."

Despite St. Marys already beating the Rebels once this season (80-44), King does not want to underestimate the Blue Devils' first-round opponent, "Ritchie County is a rival, so you can't look at their record, you can't look at what they've done. Whenever Ritchie and St. Marys play, it's a war. It's like Parkersburg and Parkersburg South, it's a war. It doesn't matter what anyone's records are, they're gonna come after you, and we're gonna see their best."

Both of St. Marys potential second round opponents, Moorefield and Belpre, come with an upside, "What's unique about this is win, lose or draw we're going to play either Moorefield or Belpre, and Moorefield, in that part of the state, it gives us an idea of what that part of the state is like. We can compare games with other people we might see later on in the season. We see how we can match up against them, and also, if we do well, it bodes well when it comes to seeding time."

King pointed out that, "Belpre is a nice basketball team. They have two of those inside, the (Haley) Alloway girl and this (Gracie) Bills girl. I don't know of anybody on our schedule except for maybe Williamstown that has two inside bigs like that that can play. These girls, they're physical, they can play, those girls are as good as anyone we play. Williamstown has a couple, but these girls are good. They can score, they're strong and they rebound and they're not afraid to lay on you. The point being, we get a little cross-river flavor, which is always nice."

The St. Marys boys team has a 4-8 record through 12 games. This record is deceiving, as the Blue Devils have lost four games by six points or less, including a 56-55 loss to Ravenswood on a last-second buzzer-beater.

Head coach Larry Johnson said of the team so far this year, "We've played about every ranked A and AA you could play. We always try to schedule a good schedule. We're just so inconsistent right now shooting the ball, to be honest with you. Our attitudes are good, our energy is good, I like how the kids are responding, they're doing everything we ask them to do, but right now we're just so inconsistent as far as scoring it. It'll help if that starts to turn soon. We've had a couple of games where we shot pretty well, and we've had some games where we got a lot of shots but we're just not converting on them. I'm hoping we're starting to turn the corner, we're changing up a few things with what we're doing offensively, so hopefully that'll help out some too."

As a team that has lost a lot of close games, St. Marys is a step away from turning things around and being a team no one wants to face come tournament time. In the first game of the invitational, the Blue Devils will get to face off against the very same Ritchie County team that handed them their first loss of the season, the perfect opportunity for a rebound.

Johnson described where the team's focus is aimed going into the tournament, "At this point, we're not focused so much on the Moorefield and Roane side. Ritchie County is our first game, so that's the one we've been talking about, reviewing things today and tomorrow and getting ready for that game. Ritchie County plays hard. They play a pretty hard schedule too. We played them in the first game of the year, actually, at Ritchie County, in a four-point game. We didn't shoot very well that game. We didn't play very well that game, I thought. I think we've gotten much better since then, and I think they've gotten better since then, so it should end up being a pretty good matchup."

Both Johnson and King are looking forward to the tournament, with Johnson saying, "It's a good tournament, it's a good atmosphere. We're gonna have some good teams, so as cold as it is outside, come indoors, watch some good basketball and enjoy it. Hopefully, barring we don't have bad weather. If we have to make any adjustments, we'll let everybody know how we handle that."

King described the effort that goes into the tournament and the amount of people it takes to put on, "We hope that everyone will come join us, it's a great time. We always have a nice hospitality suite for the coaches, referees, superintendents, bus drivers, anybody that's with a traveling party, and we have a lot of people in town that donate, either food or money towards the program. Also the parents, we have parents making potato soup now, chili, homemade chicken noodle soup, we got people making pulled pork, we got a lot of people. When you have a one-school community like we do in one county, their allegiance is to us and they really support what we do here at St. Marys High School, I'm very impressed with that."

Both coach King and Johnson would like to thank all of the sponsors that have made the event a success over the last 19 years, as well as the athletic directors and principals for the support they have provided.

Contact Aaron Lee at alee@newsandsentinel.com

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