MEN'S HOOPS: Virginia Intermont stuns King at crazed Cobra Den

It’s official: anything can happen when the Cobra Den gets crazy.

In a brontosaurus-sized upset, Virginia Intermont fed off the bedlam in its bandbox of a home gym Monday for an astonishingly lopsided 82-68 victory over crosstown rival King College.

“There were stretches tonight when we were awesome,” said VI coach Scott Hoagland. “There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. Our kids played their guts out.”

VI forced King to miss its first six shots to grab an early lead and then seized command with a 16-0 run spanning the final minute of the first half and the first 115 seconds of the second after King had briefly led and trailed by just two at the start of the explosion.

Justin Morris was credited with 42 points on the official stat sheet to lead the charge for the Cobras as he drained 7 of 15 3-pointers and played a key role in stymieing the Tornado’s comeback attempts.

“I would have never imagined this game to be like this,” Morris said. “I thought it was going to be a back-and-forth, tight game, but, hey, we came out and beat them.”

Virginia Intermont (11-12) entered the game as a middle-of-the-pack team in the NAIA’s Appalachian Athletic Conference – King’s old league before the school moved up to the NCAA Division II level and joined Conference Carolinas this season.

While VI had won just two of its past nine games, the Tornado (17-4) had won nine straight and 13 of 14 – and still remains unblemished in Conference Carolinas play.

The Cobras had lost nine straight to King dating back to a February 2006 win in the AAC tournament and the series between the two Bristol schools had gotten so lopsided that VI designated its game at King as an exhibition on its schedule last year before falling 97-71 to the Tornado.

But all that was background noise drowned out Monday by the din at the Den.

“It’s huge,” said Cobras forward Jimmie Ross, VI’s lone four-year senior, who contributed nine points, a team-high seven assists and his usual incalculable energy. “This is my fourth year and we’ve never beat them. It’s our rivalry – we just had to beat them.”

King was playing its first game with senior standout Brian Hewitt – out for two-to-four weeks after injuring his right wrist on Thursday against Limestone – but Tornado coach George Pitts wasn’t focused on Hewitt’s absence after the loss, his first to the Cobras in six seasons at King.

“They just kicked our butts, that’s all there is to it,” Pitts said. “I can’t tell you one thing that we did well. They out-rebounded us, they out-defended us, they out-shot us.”

Pitts acknowledged that the wild environment at the Cobra Den played a role in rattling his team.

“I think it had something to do with it, just because of the way our kids lost their poise and composure,” he said. “We have not played in an atmosphere like that this year. Even when we’re on the road in the conference, the atmosphere hasn’t been like that.”

King grabbed its first lead of the game at the 4:25 mark of the first half when freshman Logan Lyle, who scored 22 points, drained two free throws to give the Tornado a 27-25 advantage.

The teams traded the lead until VI’s push across the halftime break led to a 55-37 score in favor of the Cobras – an 18-point margin that was the largest of the night.

A personal 12-0 run by King guard Eddie Piccinini, who also scored 22, got the Tornado within 62-56 at the 13:21 mark of the second half, but that would be the closest VI would let King come as Morris hit a 3 and knocked down a free throw to push the lead back to double digits, a margin the Cobras would keep for the final 10 minutes.

“Hats off to our kids,” Hoagland said. “They played a whale of a ballgame. They executed our game plan to perfection. We couldn’t ask for anything better.”

Former Gate City High School star Tihlee Anderson added 15 points for the Cobras, including a three-point play with one second remaining in the first half after he snatched a steal on the inbounds pass following a Morris 3-pointer with five seconds on the clock.

The Cobras held the flustered Tornado players to a mere 21-of-62 shooting (34 percent) as the VI fans started the game loud and ended it louder.

“The atmosphere is in here alone is just crazy for another team to play in,” Morris said. “The fans are on top of you and we call them the Cobra Crazies for a reason. They keep this place crazy, no doubt about it. We feed off that, no doubt about it.”

One of the top 3-point shooting teams in the country, King made just 9 of 27 from beyond the arc against the Cobras, who themselves hit 10 of 24 from long range.

“Inside, we were not going to give them anything,” Hoagland said. “If they were going to beat us, they had to do it from 22 feet away and take their chances.”

The VI women’s basketball team also snapped a long losing skid against King last year in the first game after the Cobra Den re-opened and the win for the VI men on Monday continued a banner season for schools north of State Street as the Virginia High football and boys basketball teams each beat Tennessee High in the past five months for the first time since 1997.

In addition to giving Hoagland his first triumph over King, Monday’s wipeout win boosts the Cobras’ victory total above last year’s 10-20 mark, the previous high in Hoagland’s five seasons at VI.

“We needed something to give us a little momentum to push us through,” Hoagland said. “We feel like for [AAC] tournament position, we’ve got to win out. Hopefully this is the spark we needed.”

nhubbard@bristolnews.com | Twitter: @Hubbard_BHCSprt | (276) 645-2543