Not one Anne Arundel coach predicted that Severna Park boys basketball would be the best team in the county this season. Meade, South River? Nearly unanimously, yes.
As of Tuesday, the Falcons beat them both.
They didn’t take the lack of attention personally. Frankly, even sophomore Blake Coard couldn’t have imagined this: A spot in the county championship game, fresh off beating one undefeated team last week and a team whose only county loss was by those Mustangs’ hands. So long as Severna Park doesn’t suffer its own upset to Chesapeake on Thursday, it will clinch the regular-season county title as well and ride pretty enviable momentum into the postseason.
“We just got the ball flowing,” Coard said. “After we beat Meade, I knew we could be something.”
The Falcons months ago became the team that downed South River, 54-49, on Tuesday night. “By June,” senior Dash Havens estimated.
Over the past five years, the Severna Park coaching staff set a modest milestone: 14 wins. Something to show the community, head coach Pete Young explained, that it was worthwhile to play at Severna Park.
But that wasn’t enough. The coaches formed their own AAU program, to keep their players training together during the summer and ignore the lure of private schools. Every name on the roster signed up.
“To watch it go from spring to summer to fall to where we are now is incredible,” Young said. “There are nights where I think we can cut the lights off and they might play in the dark and be able to find each other.”
The Falcons team that claimed a county championship game spot two years ago worked through a recognizable Princeton offense. Young doesn’t like using the word “style” for this group — like a field of wildflowers, it wasn’t planted intentionally or groomed toward a particular playbook. The Falcons simply played together, growing a trust between each other. Their goal isn’t to run a particular style, but to help each other find the best shot.
“A high percent of our field goals are assisted,” Havens said. “A lot of our offense — backdoor cuts, kick-outs to three — it’s not one man taking over, it’s one man creating for everybody else.”
Show Caption1 of 8Feb. 17, 2026- South River's Jaden McDuffie dribbles against Severna Park's Dash Havens at South River High School. (John Gillis/Freelance)Expand
It’s because of that faith that the Falcons (20-2, 14-1 in-county) were able to weather the Seahawks’ opening energy wave. Senior Jaden McDuffie, eyeing 1,000 career points (and achieving it in the third quarter), battled inside to score, surging back and forth alongside his teammates to smother the Falcons in the paint.
That is, until Coard slipped out of his guards’ control. It didn’t seem to faze him that a collision with his opponents sent him to seek medical attention on the sideline, nor that he could hardly breathe without sharing oxygen with a South River kid.
Severna Park’s leading scorer wrenched himself over the Seahawks’ blockade, netting nine of Severna Park’s 13 first-quarter points to take the lead, 13-11.
“Blake’s the hardest cutter on the team,” Havens said. “You can try [stopping] him for one quarter, maybe two. But by the third, fourth, he’s running in circles, you’re chasing around and 25 seconds to the shot clock, he hits a backdoor and a bucket — that’s painful for them.”
While the Seahawks’ defense worked to limit Coard and the Falcons successfully restrained McDuffie for the rest of the half, the other Severna Park players took up the call, starting with the glass.
By hauling in defensive rebounds, the Falcons — led by Garrett Moden (16 rebounds) — prevented South River from getting second chances while generating their own scoring opportunities on the other end. The Seahawks were far from neutralized — truly, they never would be — but they had no choice but to react to their visitors’ pace and trailed 24-21 at halftime.
Had South River managed to play Severna Park for the rest of the game like it did in the first few minutes of the third quarter, it might be the Seahawks competing for a county title on Saturday.
Led by McDuffie, who was presented with a plaque and game ball after notching his 11th points of the night, South River began to peel away, scoring back-to-back layups while clipping the Falcons on the other end with turnovers.
Unfortunately for the hosts, Severna Park was also not easily quelled — especially Havens.
The three-sport athlete with a knack of coming alive in the second half bodied Seahawks for rebounds. His 3-pointer slashed South River’s advantage to one point. His layup switched the lead for Severna Park just before a free throw tied it at 40 at the third-quarter buzzer. He later pushed the Falcons to a five-point advantage with little time left in the fourth.
When he didn’t score them himself, Havens passed to his teammates to finish instead.
“Dash is like your mother,” Young said, “always there when you need him. He’s the hardest working guy on the roster, comfortable with doing the things that don’t necessarily show up in the box score. It’s very Dennis Rodman; he taps the ball a lot, gets it someplace he can grab it and pulls it in.”
Though South River drew up a half-dozen game plans to counter Severna Park through the final, tumultuous seconds, Coard ensured that the Seahawks had no chance. Both times he stepped to the free throw line, he made sure he sank two shots.
After facing Chesapeake on Thursday, the Falcons will take on Meade in the county championship game at Crofton on Saturday at noon.
SEVERNA PARK – 13 11 16 14 – 54
SOUTH RIVER – 11 10 19 9 – 49
Scoring
SP: Coard 20, Havens 10, Moden 7, Ozzy Jones 6, Xavier Marshall 4, John Batty 4
SR: McDuffie 17, Jamie Finn 11, Xander Dowell 10, Jonah Hall 4, Korey Warren 4, Nick Yotter 2, Hank Oxendine 1
Have a news tip? Contact Katherine Fominykh at kfominykh@baltsun.com or DM @capgazsports on Instagram.
