Rock-n-Roll was still in its infancy.
Buddy Holly, named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the greatest artists of all time, was still alive and was cranking out hits such as “That’ll Be the Day” and “Peggy Sue.”
Back home Ted Ellis, a future Chapmanville High School baseball and basketball coach, was a standout member of the Tiger cage squad.
The year was 1958.
Although the Logan-Chapmanville basketball series has been in a non-continuous nature with many gaps along the way, it’s still been quite a long time since the Tigers tasted victory over the Wildcats.
The long streak continued on Friday night as No. 5-ranked Logan downed Chapmanville 66-43 at the Chapmanville High School gym.
Since the rivalry resumed in 2002 after a 10-year hiatus Logan has gone 12-0 against the Tigers.
Logan has beaten Chapmanville the last two years in the Class AA regional title game. The Wildcats won all three meetings last season by wide margins, including a 101-50 victory at Willie Akers Arena.
Friday night was more of the same dominance.
Logan jumped on top 17-3 in the first quarter and never looked back.
Logan coach Mark Hatcher was pleased with the win.
“We played good defense tonight,” he said. “I thought that we did a good job of getting the ball inside when we had to. Chapmanville’s a good team and they are such good shooters. You saw that tonight when we left them open. They knocked them down. I thought that we did a really good job of keeping the ball out of the paint. I was really pleased with the way that we played.”
The Wildcats used the dominating presence of 6-foot-7 sophomore center Jonathan Bevins, who scored 20 points and blocked eight shots, to tame the Tigers.
“Jonathan had a great game. He had a lot of confidence coming in here,” Hatcher said. “He was really good. He was something like 10-for-12 from the floor. He had eight blocks but he stays out of foul trouble and he’s got great timing when he jumps up. I was really pleased with the way he played.”
Logan also was able to hit a lot of key shots and made some good interior passes for easy buckets. The Tigers were ice cold from the field, making only 20 percent of their shots.
The Cats (4-0) hadn’t played since Dec. 19.
“We really passed the ball inside well,” Hatcher said. “In the second half we opened it up and we got some lanes to pass to. We played well tonight. I was really surprised having all of those days off. I wasn’t sure how well we would play or how crisp we would be but we came out and were pretty crisp and I was really happy.”
Chapmanville (3-3) played the game without freshman Todd Terry, who sustained a broken collarbone in a recent motorcycle accident. He is most likely lost for the season, Chapmanville coach Dave Elkins said.
The Tigers just didn’t have any answer for Bevins.
“We defended him in the first half but Joey Stevens got tired,” Elkins said. “Not having Todd really hurt us a lot. We played hard on defense and we got after the ball but when you shoot 20 percent you’re not going to beat anybody. We shot 14-of-60 and we got outrebounded 36-16 and a lot of them were offensive rebounds for them. That’s one of our weaknesses. We work on that every day. Logan played hard. I don’t think their pressure hurt us too much. We got down but we had some good shots early.”
Chapmanville’s second leading scorer Jordan Bryant was held to just two points. He made two free throws and didn’t score a field goal.
“He was 0-for-9 or 0-for-10 and he quit shooting in the second half,” Elkins said of Bryant.
Elkins said Logan seems to have a psychological advantage over the Tigers.
“Down here at Chapmanville for some reason it’s like this in basketball, football, baseball and softball,” he said. “Logan is noted for their brand of ball and always going to the state tournament. Our boys somehow put them up here and say
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