Starting sophomore point guard Brandon Ford suffered a season-ending concussion in the County 3A/2A/1A League title game Feb. 20 in a 13-point loss against Friendly, which was also the last game the Yellow Jackets had played. And their opponent Tuesday, Howard County's Oakland Mills High, was fresh off a big come-from-behind victory against Central in the 2A South Region's opening round on Friday.

But No. 2-seeded Gwynn Park was up to the challenge against the 10th-seeded Scorpions. It seized control by halftime before gradually pulling away during the final 16 minutes of a 66-50 quarterfinal win. Sophomore Tion Coates scored a team-high 18 points for the Yellow Jackets, many of the highlight-reel variety, while seniors Keith Thomas added 13 points and Corey Anderson chipped in 12 points and a game-high 16 rebounds.

"It's a very precarious situation to be in," said Glick. "We're missing two starters [Ford, and senior forward Maurice Peavy from the middle of the season] and we're playing our first game without our point guard. But we're a very resilient team."

But Glick was happy with the win. His next concern will be in Wednesday's semifinals, when his team hosts Frederick Douglass. The game was played after The Gazette went to press. The Eagles traveled to Charles County Tuesday evening and eliminated third-seeded North Point.

"I was very happy with out effort," said Glick after Tuesday's win. "It's survive and advance, that's the bottom line of it.

"We're going to have a game [Wednesday] against Douglass, a big rival. We're fortunate enough to have beaten them twice. It's an archrival for the right to go to the region final, so we're excited about that."

Gwynn Park (18-5) controlled the tempo against Oakland Mills (14-10), only losing momentum at times on its own turnovers. Though the Scorpions held a brief led of 13-11 after the first quarter, they never led again, though they had tied the game at 27 in the second quarter. There, Coates scored a layup, then followed with a perfect alley-oop dunk from senior point guard Mike Fourth.

Though Gwynn Park never seemed in jeopardy of giving up the lead again, its chances of winning increased with 2 minutes, 37 seconds remaining in the third quarter when Oakland Mills' 6-foot-6 forward/center Brandon Pines fouled out. Anderson dominated the boards thereafter and his teammates began getting consistent closer looks down low, and capped it off with 9-of-13 free-throw shooting in the final quarter.

"It didn't really make a difference when he fouled out," said Anderson. "We just had to come out and play. We probably could have put them away earlier, but we had issues throughout the whole game. We had a lot of turnovers and things like that."

Glick praised the performance of Fourth (seven points, four assists), who had missed the previous seven games. Thomas heated up in the second half, scoring 10 of 13 points, while Coates scored a game-high 14 after intermission.

"I like to dunk it," said Coates. "I had four tonight, two in the first [half] and two more in the second."

Gwynn Park has just one goal in mind, and that is defending its region championship, then the goal will shift toward trying to win the program's first state title in 21 years.

"If we work hard enough, we can win," said Coates. "Nobody ever did the stuff we did in the offseason. We have worked hard for this."

"We're trying to get back to states," added Anderson. "That's our main goal to get back to states and get back to Comcast and win it."

Note: Junior guard Brian Blue scored seven points. Three of them came on a crowd-pleasing three-point shot as the buzzer sounded to end the third quarter. Blue released the ball from the left side of three-quarters court and the ball swished through the net to give a Gwynn Park a 10-point cushion heading into the fourth quarter.

E-mail Adam Rubenstein at arubenstein@gazette.net.