Alex Rychwalski | Some lessons are learned the hard way

Saturday could not have gone worse from the perspective of a University of Maryland alum turned Cumberland area sports reporter.

The day began with the Southern Garrett girls falling again to their nemesis Pikesville, 67-62, in the Class 1A state championship game in College Park, a tragic result for reasons I’ll get into later.

Then, after filing the game story at warp speed, I rushed home to my parents’ abode in Sykesville just in time for the opening tip of Maryland’s Big Ten Tournament semifinal game against Michigan.

Some 40 minutes later, my heart was again ripped out by Trey Donaldson’s last-second layup — spurred by the worst late-game defense I’ve ever seen — in an 81-80 Michigan win.

Maryland will live to play another day, however, as the Terrapins are the No. 4 seed in the NCAA Tournament’s West Region. They open what I hope is a Final Four run against No. 13 Grand Canyon on Friday in Seattle.

There is no tomorrow for the Southern girls, or at least none this season.

That’s an impossibly difficult pill to swallow for a team that made defeating Pikesville its No. 1 mission over the past 12 months since falling to the Panthers in the 2023-24 state championship game.

Southern went out and played a brutal schedule to prepare for the Baltimore area elite, defeating West Virginia Class AAAA runner-up Morgantown, and Class AAA champion Wayne and runner-up Nitro as part of a stacked slate.

With the help of a strong Western Maryland Athletic Conference, Southern played a 27-game schedule all against teams that finished .500 or better.

The Rams went 24-3 in those game.

And yet, on Sunday morning, Southern woke up asking itself the same question it did a year prior, “How the heck do we beat those guys?”

Southern did everything it could to prepare for that basketball game, on and off the court, and the result didn’t change.

There’s a reason the NBA Finals are a seven-game series and why the NCAA Tournament rarely has the best four teams in the Final Four.

Basketball is a variable sport. In seven games, Southern beats Pikesville at least twice. Maybe more.

Times like these are why extracurriculars, and sports in particular, are so crucial to education. It’s something those who think athletics are overblown or overemphasized will never understand.

Sometimes you work as hard as you possibly can in life, and it doesn’t matter.

You can have all the credentials for a job and still get passed over. When you get one, you can be a model employee and still not get the promotion over a less deserving person. Then, after working all those extra hours, a company can still give you the ax.

In your personal life, you can be a perfect partner and still a relationship might fail for reasons beyond your control.

The real world isn’t fair.

Other than getting rejected from your dream college, there isn’t a better way to learn this lesson at a young age than from sports.

I wish those Southern girls, particularly the seniors, didn’t have to be exposed to the cruelty of the world for a little longer, but I have no doubt those players will overcome the pain they’re feeling right now and turn it into a positive.

The reality is, some things in life you just can’t prepare for, and Pikesville may just be one of those things for a little Western Maryland school.

The Panthers play a style of basketball that you can only appreciate if you’ve seen it in person.

You’d recognize it if you’ve seen Baltimore City powers Lake Clifton or Edmondson Westside on the boys side of things, or Cambridge-South Dorchester in recent years.

It’s organized chaos, though it’s often just chaos. A physical, ugly, disjointed and sloppy brand of athletic basketball that isn’t replicated anywhere near Western Maryland.

It isn’t replicated anywhere in the state of West Virginia either.

Pikesville shoots 24% from 3 and 52% from the free-throw line.

Those are paltry figures for a basketball team that’s now won five straight state championships, but they turn you over and crash the glass at an exceptional rate.

Just look at Pikesville’s shot attempts to see how many extra possessions it gets.

Pikesville has taken at least 50 shots in all but one game, and it’s taken 70-plus shots eight times.

For reference, Southern’s season high in shot attempts is 68 against Winfield on Dec. 13.

It’s almost a different sport.

Pikesville plays catch with the rim on one end, either finishing after a series of offensive boards or by earning a trip to the foul line, and on the other end, it defends you like every possession is life or death.

Southern started well Saturday, jumping out to a 13-7 lead, but Pikesville eventually got the Rams to play its game — a choppy, mistake-happy brand of basketball.

It’s maddening for a team as detail-oriented and technically sound as Southern, which turned the ball over more than 20 times for the first time in 18 games.

It’s as much a mental battle as it is one with Pikesville.

The Panthers’ 48-39 win over Southern in last year’s final, and their 38-33 triumph over Mountain Ridge at the same stage the prior season had people remarking to me that they “didn’t seem that good.”

But that’s what Pikesville does. It makes you play the worst game of your season.

When things break down, one of Pikesville’s Mariah Jones-Bey or NyJae Malik-El can beat their defender one-on-one, requiring help defense and leaving the weak side open for rebounds.

If the help is late, they’re headed to the free-throw line, something the Panthers did 37 times Saturday — a season high.

When Pikesville does need to put one in the hoop, it does so fearlessly.

After Gabbi Berry hit a pair of free throws to bring Southern within 60-56 of Pikesville with 1:53 left, 99% of coaches in America would want their teams to run some clock.

Pikesville’s Ka’nai Pyatt pushed the ball inside the arc, crossed over a Southern defender, and buried a midrange jumper from the free-throw line.

Just 10 seconds came off the clock.

It was a bad shot, and if it didn’t go in, basketball-savvy spectators would’ve been shaking their heads.

Southern then went down and pushed the tempo, missed, and it led to a run-out for Jones-Bey.

The Rams had numbers on defense with two defenders back, but Jones-Bey split them and finished.

You can’t teach athleticism like that.

Jones-Bey, mind you, played all 32 minutes and still had the legs to make that play in crunch time.

In the 27 seconds that followed Berry’s free throws, Pikesville scored twice and put a dagger in Southern’s season.

And that sequence didn’t include the most impressive finish of the night. A minute prior, Malik-El pirouetted between five Southern defenders in transition to hit a tough fadeaway pull-up.

It was a miraculous individual play when conventional wisdom would’ve said to pull the ball out.

None of it was by the book, and yet plays like those are what decided a state championship game.

Now everyone is asking, where does Southern go from here?

All but 1,000-point scorer Carly Wilt will return to the Rams’ rotation, their stacked class will be entering their junior seasons and point guard Emelee Parks will be a senior.

That means Southern will be a heavy favorite to return to College Park.

Pikesville, which has zero seniors on its roster, will be there waiting.

Short of playing Pikesville or a team from Baltimore City in the regular season, I’m not sure what Southern could do to better prepare.

I’d stick with the same formula that won you 47 games over the past two years.

The goal shouldn’t be to garner redemption or to beat Pikesville, it should be play the best basketball game of your season on the final day.

If Southern does that, it will be a state champion.

If it doesn’t, another opportunity for growth will present itself.

That’s really what high school sports are about.

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