Madison County’s girls basketball team had another successful night Monday as it defeated visiting Warren County 44-35. The Mighty Mountaineer girls were determined to take on another win by maintaining a lead over the team the entire game.

Madison County senior point guard Casey Campbell might be the shortest member of the Mountaineers’ starting lineup, but he doesn’t act like it.
“He’s 5’9 and he plays a lot bigger then that,” Madison Coach Ben Breeden said. Campbell and the Mountaineers jetted and jumped their way to three more wins last week, downing Manassas Park, George Mason and Charlottesville.

There wasn’t a capacity crowd in Madison County’s gym Jan. 9, but that didn’t stop the Mountaineers from sending the place to a new decibel level in their 71-36 win over Monticello. “We got a steal and I got Matt (Garr) a dunk,” senior Jerel Carter said. “Matt surprised everybody when he dunked on that dude —  everybody in the crowd went off.“

Entering the Dec. 30 contest, Madison County’s Logan Terrell was 7 points away from the Mountaineers’ school record for career points.
And everybody in the building knew it.

This is a re-building year for Madison County’s girls basketball team, according to longtime Coach Katherine Johnson. Johnson has been coaching MCHS athletes for the past 32 years.

For Madison County basketball, the only goal is the one that got away last year. “We expect to win it all this year,” Madison County senior Jerel Carter said. “Last year was a big disappointment – how we lost in the semi-finals – and we don’t want that feeling again.”

Last year Madison County’s Ethan O’Connell was third in the district, third in the region and seventh in the state and has compiled a 91-30 record after two seasons.

It was a long-awaited match for Madison County’s volleyball squad as its goal for the season was to make it to the regional tournament. The Mountaineer girls, the No. 2 Bull Run District seed, traveled to play the No. 1 seed Riverheads from the Shenandoah Valley District on Nov. 10. The Gladiators, who entered the match with an impressive 12-0 district record, battled Madison through the first half of game one.

Former Madison County High School assistant boys basketball coach Ben Breeden is taking over the reins as head coach.

Whom does Tim Taylor want to succeed him as head boys basketball coach at Madison County High School? “I’m endorsing Assistant Coach Ben Breeden,” Taylor said during a June 6 appearance as the main guest on “Varsity Lights with Jerry Miller,” a Charlottesville television station’s sports talk show. He said, however, that the Madison County School Board would be the ones ultimately making the decision. (Taylor’s wife, Tonya Taylor, is a member of the board.)

Madison County’s girls basketball season did not go as planned during the team’s 2008-2009 campaign. Coach Katherine Johnson’s squad could never get a string of wins during the season, which in turn didn’t allow it to gain momentum to pull through the rest of the season and get into the play-offs. The team did pull together to go 3-19, 0-8 getting the key three wins against Luray twice and then against Monticello.

Madison County’s fourth-quarter meltdown in a 57-54 loss to Dan River brought an unbeaten season and a march toward the state boys basketball title game to a screeching halt March 12 in the Group A, Division 2 semifinals.

UPDATE
Madison County and Dan River will vie for a chance to play in the big dance when the teams meet in the state boys basketball semi-finals Thursday, March 12. Tip-off is set for 7 p.m. at Virginia Commonwealth University’s Siegel Center in Richmond.

UPDATE
To call the March 7 crowd for the Group A, Division 2 boys basketball quarter-finals Madison County-friendly would be a gross understatement. The Mountaineer faithful made their presence felt at Charlottesville’s Monticello High School, and their team didn’t disappoint as Madison held off a fourth-quarter rally from Northampton to win, 66-57.

UPDATE
Undefeated Madison County (27-0) will play Saturday in the state quarter-final boys basketball match-up against Northampton, a team from Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The March 7 game will be at Monticello High School in Charlottesville. Tip-off is set for 6 p.m. (An incorrect tip-off time was previously reported.)

When George Mason invaded Madison County’s hardwood Feb. 25, the Mustangs surprised nearly the entire Wetsel Middle School gym crowd by leading the majority of the first quarter and forcing the Mountaineers to rally for a 59-44 boys basketball victory.

Madison County’s boys basketball team continued its undefeated streak by defeating Clarke County last week by a close 54-49 margin. The Mountaineers played well overall, but did commit some errors, which the Eagles swooped in to take and use to their advantage, pulling in as close as 3 points in the fourth quarter. But even the often-impressive efforts of Clarke’s Shiley brothers were not enough to overcome the seemingly unstoppable Mountaineers.

Madison County’s boys basketball team is now perched at a lofty 18-0 after getting big wins last week over their last Group 2-AA Jefferson District opponent in Fluvanna County and also wins over Bull Run District foe Strasburg and over Group-A opponent Luray. The Mountaineers remain No. 1 in the Associated Press Group-A basketball poll, this week receiving nine of the votes for the No. 1 spot. Coach Tim Taylor’s crew has not lost this spot since the poll began earlier in the season.

Madison County’s boys basketball team rolled to 13-0 last week as it began district play against two teams it lost to last year. But the Mountaineers remained undefeated when they beat district rivals George Mason and Manassas Park. The wins were good enough to rank the squad No. 1 in the state, according to the polls on the prep Web site http://www.virginiapreps.com.

The Madison County girls basketball team hopes the second half of its season will be a complete turnaround from the first half. Through the first nine games of the season, the Mountaineer hoop girls are 1-8 with their lone 42-31 win at home against Luray’s Bulldog girls. The other games have not gone according to Madison Coach Katherine Johnson’s plan.

Madison County’s hardwood dominance continues, as the still-undefeated Mountaineers climb to 8-0 after pulling away from the Mustangs of Monticello Dec. 20 to get a big 63-51 win over the Group AA-Jefferson District foe. The game was tied at 26 at the halftime break, but then Madison Coach Tim Taylor took his team to a triangle-and-two defense to stop big Monticello scorers Hines Banks and Mark Brady. The new and non-practiced defense worked as Madison took the lead and never looked back in the third quarter, outscoring Monticello 20-9.

Madison County continued its roll in boys basketball as the Mountaineers moved ahead to 5-0 after toppling larger rivals William Monroe of Greene County and Orange County. It also added a win over Page County. Madison controlled all three games and put multiple players in double figures in the games as well.

To say Madison County’s boys basketball team is off and running understates things. During the Mountaineers first two weeks of action, they were on fire as they took on border foes in their first three match-ups and won each game — even ones against much larger schools.

Although the 2008-2009 Madison County High School’s girls basketball team is young and inexperienced – the squad is made up of an eager bunch of athletes. “We are a very energetic, scrappy group and defensively capable of holding teams far below their scoring averages,” Coach Katherine Johnson told The Eagle.

This year’s Madison County boys basketball team achieved something rarely seen when it took to the court Wednesday against Greene County’s William Monroe. Not a single Mountaineer player was on board as a replacement for a graduated senior, because the young 2007-2008 team didn’t have any seniors on its roster.