Quite literally, West Florence faced a tall order playing in the “Temple of Doom” on  Feb. 17. 

The visiting Knights were giving up size to a long, rangy Irmo High School team which has played its best basketball since the return of Class 4A Player of the Year Brandon Crawford from illness.

Crawford and the Yellow Jackets put that advantage to full use in a dominating 86-62 win in the second round of the Class 4A Lower State playoffs.

After an early 4-2 deficit, Irmo took command of the game with a 23-4 run to close out the first quarter. The Yellow Jackets never trailed again, building its lead as high as 33 points in the fourth quarter.

Five players scored in double figures for Irmo, led by Madden Collins with 29 points. Brandon Crawford finished with 15 points, but his eight blocked shots proved just as effective in taking West Florence out of its game.

“Brandon’s presence defensively creates offense for us,” Irmo head coach Tim Whipple said. “Everybody plays attention to him offensively. He doesn’t score as many points on the offensive end. He scores his points on the defensive end. He’s done an incredible job. He’s averaging five blocks a game and he certainly changes the game when he’s in there.”

“The thing about it, we knew that Irmo was a fundamentally sound team,” West Florence head coach Kevin Robinson said. “Obviously, with Brandon Crawford and his size kind of…affect how we do things. You know you can't teach 6-9 and he kind of affect ball at the ball what we try to do. So, we wanted to kind of slow them down a little bit, but we got down early. So, whatever gameplan we had, we had to kind of strap that early and kind of speed up the game in our favor. But that’s the serious thing. Their size, we just got flat out outhustled tonight.”

The Knights were forced to settle for three-point shots, connecting on 10 in the game. While it brought them within 10 points early in the second half, they were more than matched offensively by the Yellow Jackets’ offensive output as they made nine from behind the arc.

Collins accounted for four 3-pointers, followed by Jonathan White with three to go with his 14 points. Te’Andre Summons and Joey Albritton rounded out the quintet of double-figure scorers with 11 and 10, respectively.

“I told them at halftime, our offense got them back in the game because we shot the ball so quickly after we got the lead that we kind of gave them an opportunity to get back in the game. But then in the second half, when they got it back down, every single time we did have an answer. We hit some big threes, we got some breakaways, Brandon was able to get some stick backs. So, it was definitely a great job of making things happen.”

Irmo will play its final home game of the season in the third round on Feb. 20. It faces Lucy Beckham for a trip to the Lower State final in Florence.