By Ted Allen

Published: March 12, 2008

“We’ve had the most wins in school history,” Nelson County senior point guard Thomas Brown said. “We were Dogwood District regular-season champions, tournament champs and Region B champs … so there’s only one championship left.
“We’re real excited,” he added. “We’re hungry for this, but not anxious. We know what we have to do and we just have to get it done.”
Nelson second-year coach Brandon Garrett is trying to keep his team focused on the game at hand, and not all of the distractions.
“It’s almost impossible to not think about the possibility of being in the state championship game,” he said. “(But) Wednesday comes before Saturday and then Saturday will take care of itself.”
Playing in the Region B championship game at Eastern Mennonite University should help Nelson adjust to playing at VCU.
“It’s a different arena as far as visual perception,” he said. “You’ve got to get used to not having something right behind the backboard.”
Though he didn’t have a chance to scout Twin Valley, Garrett believes the competition the Governors has faced,
particularly Altavista — a state semifinalist last season which it beat four out of five times — prepared it well for the Final Four.
After meeting a taller, quicker Chesterfield Community squad, and using a 16-2 third-quarter surge to seal a 66-61 victory in Saturday’s state quarterfinal at Amherst, Nelson should be about as big and even faster than the Panthers (21-7).
“Chesterfield was a big test for us,” Garrett said.
“We were at a big size disadvantage. The teams that are left, size-wise, we match up better with.”
He hopes to be able to exploit his team’s speed advantage by getting out on transition whenever possible tonight.
“We want to try to control the tempo a little bit, and do what we’ve been doing all year,” Garrett said. “We want to focus on our game. We don’t want to change anything as far as playing defense or running our offense. We just need to go out and execute.”
“We’re a running team, so we want to run but still be under control when we do it,” Brown added.
Twin Valley, which opened in 2001, has experience on its side, making its second trip to the Group A state Final Four in three years after losing to Clarke County in the 2006 championship game.
“They’ve been there,” Garrett said. “They’ve got a good coach (Brian Moore) who’s real respected throughout the state.”
The Panthers lost five games in a row early in the season but rebounded to roll off 14 consecutive wins before losing to Twin Springs in the Region D championship game.
They feature two strong post players — Josh Smith, a 6-foot-1, 180-pound sophomore who leads the team in scoring at 17 points per game, and Hunter Simpson, who scored 22 points to lead four players in double figures in a state quarterfinal win over Eastern Montgomery.
“They’re a good team with a good amount of weapons,” Brown said.
“They’re a team full of shooters and drivers. They have good post players, good shooters, good rebounders and a pretty good point guard.”
But Brown, the Governors’ floor leader, likes the hand he’s been dealt, as well.
“We have some pretty good weapons, we’ve just got to use them,” he said.
Tonight’s winner will play the winner of today’s first semifinal between Surry County and Galax on Saturday at 1 p.m. at VCU.