Laura Clark
Published: March 12, 2008

Building a 28-1 record and heading to the state semifinal round is serious business for any basketball team. But don’t let the Govs fool you. If the game’s not on the line they are a comedy troupe, regularly terrorizing each other as only those so very close can.

Starting seniors Thomas Brown and T.J. Martin, who are cousins, and brothers Chris and Mike Jones, headline the act, which digs mostly on the underclassmen, but also each other.

“He calls me Llama, and I call him the Predator,” Mike Jones said of Martin.

“We just call him Dumbo. And we tell him he should be dunking because of his ears,” Martin said of Chris Jones, who was also dubbed the most obnoxious on car rides because he talks so much.

“Chris is real cool,” Brown said, “but he always tells the corniest jokes. But they’re so bad they make everybody laugh.”

“It’s not that they’re bad. They’re just real stupid,” Chris said in defense.

And Brown? He has no nickname based on his facial features. No move, like Chris’s pump-fakes, that his teammates recall in zest. That he laughs like a girl is the best they can come up with.

“Soon as they say my name, I jump on somebody else,” Brown said. “I always interfere with it.”

At least for now.

The seniors’ threshold for embarrassment grew stronger during the offseason as they spent hours together riding to spring league games, staying overnight at camps and hanging out; often without a basketball. Like their individual development, the team bond grew exponentially in the last year and paved the way for the success Nelson is enjoying.

“Those four guys have been the catalyst of the whole program,” coach Brandon Garrett said. “As far as all the camps and stuff we went to, they kind of initiated it. They wanted to play.”

As the regular season stretched into district and regional tournaments, the seniors kept evolving, finding individual specialties and pulling each other along in the process.

The Instigator

Brown calls himself an instigator when it comes to teasing his teammates, but he also sparks the offense on the court, seeing the floor and finding seams in an opponent’s defense where he can streak to the basket. His teammates are confident putting the ball in his hands in the final seconds, knowing he can protect the ball and knock down foul shots when teams inevitable foul him.

Brown’s maturity since the last season has added all-around leader to his resume.

“I think he’s giving a lot more encouragement, and I think he’s embraced it and ran with it,” Garrett said.

He can break down defenders off the dribble, maybe a little between-the-legs action before he throws a no-look pass at one of his teammates dashing into the paint from another angle.

If you’re not ready for it you might get nailed in the face.

“He used to get it with us last year,” Mike said. “But now we’ve caught onto it. He’ll come down the court and look at you real quick, so you know its coming.”

This kind of split-second sneaky communication came in handy this season as teams threw everything they had at Brown, sometimes double-teaming him outside, triple-teaming him as he drove the lane. Against Page County, Brown invited the defenders, then dished to Martin along the baseline or post-players like Steve Washington or Trevor Martin.

Brown only scored nine points that game, but his 14 assists helped propel the Govs to their first regional championship title. And teammates like

T.J. Martin, who scored 19 against Page, found more offensive confidence for the next game.

The Lieutenant

At the end of a game, if Brown doesn’t have the ball in his hands, look to Martin. His wing 3-pointer to take the lead against Altavista in the district tiebreaker at Appomattox signaled a change in the shy guard, who began to step into his role as a shooter.

“T.J. can shoot. Everybody was waiting for the day when T.J. would start shooting the ball,” Mike said.

Brown for one, grew frustrated, and repeatedly gave Martin the ball in games, telling him to shoot.

“If we pass the ball a couple times and you’re open, shoot. That’s what we’re here for. We’re here to win, not hold the ball the whole game and go into 100 overtimes,” Brown said, adding that his teammates were afraid of being ball hogs. “When we worry about each other and what we say on the court, that’s why we’re 28-1. We’re a team and we don’t argue about shots or nothing like that.”

“He stays on my case,” Martin said. “He makes me shoot.”

When Brown has left the game in foul trouble, it’s Martin who must bring the ball up the floor. When Nelson met Altavista in the region tournament, the Govs scrambled to function without him. But in the state quarterfinals, when Brown left again, Martin brought the ball up without a hitch.

Brown calls Martin a lieutenant, and Garrett said he’s accepted that leadership role.

“I think he’s become a lot more aggressive, a lot more assertive,” he said.

The Student

Mike Jones’ teammates say he seems to never get tired. Like Martin, he’s stepped up as a shooter, and now the Govs count on him for 8-10 points a game.

“He wants to get better,” Garrett said. “He’s got a good attitude about trying to learn different things, especially his shot.”

But Jones thrives on defense, where he’s often assigned to the biggest offensive threat of an opposing team. In the state quarterfinals, Jones held All-Region C player, David Copeland, to three points through the first half.

When Copeland hit three back-to-back threes early in the fourth quarter, his teammates and Garrett broke him back into the game.

“I challenged him in front of everybody and told him that’s why he was guarding him, because we count on him for things like that,” Garrett said. “At the same time, I know Mike can take that.”

“So then they got on me, and I wanted to prove something,” Jones said.

Jones did, but if he happened to lose Copeland, he trusts Martin to pick him, or any other guy, up without a fuss.

The two no longer have to say anything about setting up a fast break. Martin heads to right wing, Jones to the left.

“And we just set up on the wing and Thomas knows we’re going to be there no matter what, ready to shoot the ball,” Jones said.

The Heart

While bashful off the court, on the court Chris Jones hides nothing. In his expressions you can read the emotion of the game.

As the third quarter ended against Chesterfield, Jones swiped a ball from the Eagles and drove in for a layup that put Nelson up by nine. As the ball was sinking through the hoop, Jones had already turned away, pumping his fist high as he sprinted back on defense.

“I look at T.J. and laugh,” Mike said of his brother’s outbursts.

“He gets you hyped, too,” Martin said.

Sometimes Jones gets the Govs going by doing things Garrett doesn’t like, such as bumping opponents after play has stopped. But Jones likes contact; he has taken the most charges of his team, almost one a game in the postseason. He also has a knack for timing rebounds, and has stepped up his scoring, mainly in the lane.

“He’s 5-8, 5-9, and he plays like he’s 6-2, 6-3 every game,” Garrett said. “I think he takes pride in taking a charge. He’s a warrior.”

Two days before the state semifinal, Jones had the middle and ring fingers of his right hand taped for blisters “from dunking?or trying to dunk,” he said.

On the way to practice, Jones sheds his quiet demeanor and taunts Washington, the starting center, with a “Nosezilla!”

Washington just shrugs, accepting an underclassman’s lot.

David and Goliath

None of the seniors like to look for differences among each other, beyond the tease-factors anyway. They are a united front, knowing they are moving closer to their dream of a state title. And they say they’re focused and set on this goal.

The fifth-man, Washington, looks up to his seniors and has gained confidence from their success as a team.

“Soon as I met them, it just clicked,” he said. “I know they’re going to come through, so I’ve got to come through with them.”

The Govs’ success this season wouldn’t be possible if any one of the leaders was selfish. To that extent, credit Garrett for pre-game talks.

“What’s that that saying he always says?” Mike Jones asked. “It doesn’t matter?”

“It’s amazing what can happen when you don’t care who gets the credit,” Martin finished.

“Yes, he always tells us that. It kind of gets us going because we really don’t care who gets the credit. We just want to win games,’ Jones said. “Before we played Chesterfield, he gave us?”

“The David and Goliath speech,” Martin said. “He said David had five rocks against Goliath, and we were those five rocks.”

“He got us going,” Jones said. “And we went out there and did what we had to do.”