MOUNT STERLING | Having done the region tournament dance a few times as both a coach and a player, Mason County coach Chris O'Hearn knows "if you have a weakness, it will be exposed" this time of year.
Scott was able to exploit a Royals weakness -- shooting from the field -- in the 10th Region tournament quarterfinals on Thursday night at Montgomery County.
But Mason's experience, a question mark coming into the season, showed itself to be strong down the stretch as the Royals found enough points to advance with a 49-44 victory.
Senior Tyler Black and sophomore Shawn Johnson scored 11 points apiece for Mason (17-13). Senior Cody Hamm scored seven of his nine points in the fourth quarter, including the go-ahead 3-pointer as part of a 9-0 run.
Junior Nick Jackson led everyone with 22 points -- half his team's final total -- and 11 rebounds for Scott (15-15).
Mason advances to take on tourney host Montgomery in the semifinals Saturday at 5 p.m. The Indians downed Pendleton County 54-37 in Thursday's first quarterfinal.
The Royals led most of the first half but trailed the entire second half until that 9-0 spurt, all of which came from seniors. With his team trailing 40-36, Hamm connected on a pair of free throws with 6:01 to play. Black drove for a layup to tie the game with 4:50 remaining and, after a Scott turnover and a Royals timeout, Hamm nailed a trey from the left corner with 3:47 to play to go ahead for good.
"He's a senior, he's been through it before, and he stepped up at an opportune time and hit a big 3 for us," O'Hearn said of Hamm. "That was one of two that we made on the night, and it couldn't have come at a better time."
Josh Harris sank a contested layup nearly two minutes later to put Mason on top by five.
The Royals won despite shooting 36.2 percent from the field and 31 percent in the first half against a defensive mix of man-to-man and zone from Scott. The Eagles held Mason scoreless for an almost eight-minute-long period stretching from the 2:49 mark of the second quarter through the 3:14 mark of the third.
"We knew they would mix their defenses up a lot," O'Hearn said. "They do that quite often, and when you get to the regional tournament, if you have a weakness, it will be exposed, and they are very solid defensively and we've had trouble making shots, and we had to rely on defending them as well and rebounding the ball to stay in the game because we just had a hard time shooting the basketball."
Eagles coach Brad Carr set out to dictate the flow of the game by mixing up Scott's defensive looks.
"We made them adjust to things we were doing defensively," he said. "When we would go zone, they'd try to get their shooters in and then we felt like as soon as they got those guys in, we matched up very well man-to-man against 'em and were able to do some things against 'em."
During the Royals' scoreless stretch, Scott only managed to come up with eight points to go from trailing 24-19 on Mason's Zaire Henry's 3 with 2:49 left in the first half to leading 27-24 when Jackson drove the lane for the only points of the first 4:46 of the third quarter.
Scott extended that edge to 37-32 on Jackson's layup to end the third period and led 40-36 after a Jackson free throw with 6:24 remaining, the last points before the Royals' game-winning run.
Both teams found themselves on the business end of wide foul discrepancies for a half. Mason was whistled for 11 fouls to Scott's five in the first half, and after halftime, the Eagles were called for 12 violations to the Royals' six. That made the math even at 17 fouls each for the game.
"I thought they were being aggressive driving it (and) they were getting fouls called," O'Hearn said of the first half. "I thought we were being fairly aggressive the first half, but weren't getting calls, and we did the second half. We got in the bonus early and were able to pull it out."
Carr noted his team's inability to get to the free-throw line in the second half was at least largely the result of not being as aggressive as he'd like.
"Just down the stretch we didn't hit shots," he said. "We didn't get to the free-throw line much in the second half like we did in the first half. They did, we didn't, so they were more aggressive than we were, and generally in a battle like this the more aggressive person wins, and that's exactly what happened."
The Eagles only lose senior Blake Daugherty to graduation and return all-region performer Jackson, so they plan to figure heavily in the region contenders' conversation next year.
"We should be, if not one of the favorites for the 10th Region next year, we should be up there," Carr said. "This only gives our kids more experience, and hopefully being here and playing in the hostile situation, hopefully it'll benefit us."
Mason looks ahead to Montgomery, which knocked off the Royals 53-49 Jan. 31 in Mount Sterling.
"Certainly (when) you gotta talk about Montgomery, you gotta start with Omar Prewitt, and he's a big-time player, a big-time scorer," O'Hearn said. "Steven (Chambers) did a good job on Jackson tonight, I thought, wore him down a little bit and then Josh finished it off. Steven'll have another big test on Saturday."
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