The Cavaliers’ six-year run of dominance comes to a close.
By Randy Whitehouse
Staff Writer

AUGUSTA – The Valley dynasty is over, struck down by a Saber.

The Sabers of Calvary Chapel Christian School ended Valley’s unprecedented six-year run of dominance in Class D with a mesmerizing 72-69 win Saturday afternoon at the Augusta Civic Center.

Superior rebounding and a late defensive adjustment gave Calvary, of Orrington, its first gold ball in school history. The Sabers finished the season 22-0 while halting Valley’s 46-game winning streak.

Sophomore point guard Brock Bradford led Calvary with 24 points and seven rebounds. Josh Madden added 18 points and 16 boards and Kyle Bradford poured in 16 points. Mark Gaudet led Valley (19-1) with 28 points, while Travis Hovey added 20.

“There was no way we could look by Valley because of who they are and their record, but we couldn’t put them up on a pedestal and think that we couldn’t play with them,” Brock Bradford said. “Our team kept their composure when Valley started to make a run.”

“We didn’t rebound well and we didn’t defend as well as we should have been able to,” Gaudet said. “You’ve got to hand it to them. They did a great job.”

Calvary outrebounded Valley, 41-23, including 20-7 on the offensive glass. Many of those offensive rebounds came from the weak side of the the court and led to second-chance points for the Sabers.

“We knew we had to crash the boards and going weakside is part of it,” Calvary coach Ross Bradford said. “A lot of those (3-point) shots either come right straight back or they go long, and we knew we had to try to cover both sides of the backboard.”

“They take a lot of long shots and there are going to be a lot of long rebounds,” Valley coach Dwight Littlefield said. “They got more shots than we wanted them to get. That was the key.”

The Cavaliers (48 percent) outshot the Sabers (41 percent) from the floor, but Calvary ended up taking 70 shots for the game, a dozen more than Valley.

” We knew they were going to score because they’ve got great shooters, but we didn’t want to give them that many shots,” Littlefield said.

Calvary pounded the glass from the beginning and charged out to a 20-14 lead in the first quarter and a 34-27 advantage at the half. Gaudet then torched the Sabers’ man-to-man defense with 15 points in the third quarter to pull the Cavs within one entering the fourth quarter.

“Gaudet was really starting to heat up in the third quarter. They set some screens and we weren’t doing a good job of switching, so my dad made the decision to go box-and-one,” Brock Bradford said. “We really wanted to try to step up the pressure on him.”

The new defense worked, as Gaudet was shut out for the first 7:47 of the quarter.

Valley was able to find some other scoring options, though. Hovey and Mark Hyland (nine points off the bench) teamed up to send the Cavaliers on a 9-2 run to start the period for their biggest lead of the game, a 60-54 advantage with 6:40 left. Calvary answered with a 7-0 run of its own for a 61-60 edge.

The lead changed hands three more times before Kyle Bradford put the Sabers up for good with a short jumper to make it 65-64 with 2:56 left. Gaudet finally made his first basket of the quarter, a 3-pointer, with 13 seconds left to pull Valley back within one.

Brock Bradford sank both ends of a one-and-one to make it a three-point game again with 7.5 seconds left. Valley’s final shot, a 23-footer by Gaudet to tie it, bounced high off the back of the rim as the buzzer sounded.