WALDORF, MD - A season after falling agonizingly short in their quest for a Maryland 4A State Championship, the Walt Whitman Vikings have given themselves another chance. 

Whitman led CH Flowers from start to finish in a 4A semifinal matchup at North Point High School on Wednesday, picking up a 55-44 victory to advance to Saturday's final against Laurel at the University of Maryland.

Saturday’s game offers a welcome opportunity for Whitman, which reached the state final last year but suffered a 74-49 loss to Frederick.

“After that game, we knew we had a big core of guys coming back,” Whitman coach Chris Lun said, “and their goal from that day leaving the locker room was to do whatever we could to get back and to show that we’re a better team than we showed against Frederick. We know that Frederick absolutely deserved to beat us and they completely outplayed us and they were a great team, but we didn't give our best effort. We have a chance to do that Saturday, so I know our guys are going to lock in and just hope we can play good Whitman basketball.”

Lun’s players echoed the sentiment when asked what it meant to be heading back to the final.

“It means we’ve got a hell of a team and a hell of a coach,” 2025 guard Titian DeRosa said, “and we’re ready to go and we’re ready to win. No one’s satisfied, we’ve been here before. It wasn’t good enough last year and it’s not good enough [just to get back] this year, so it just shows how good this team is and that we’re ready to go.”

Max Williams had 16 points to lead the Vikings, while DeRosa added 11 and Will Shapiro 9.

“It means everything [to go back],” Williams said. “Everybody thought we might have lost a step but we knew what we had to do from the beginning of the season. We had four returners, and we’ve got to go there and win on Saturday. I feel like we played a really good team [today] and we should be prepared for anything. We had a hard road and we’ve just got to capitalize on Saturday.”

Wednesday’s matchup was tight early, with the teams knotted at 11-11 after one quarter. Whitman used a variety of defensive looks to counter Flowers’ size advantage, and held 6-foot-9 star center Tyrell Bowles scoreless until almost midway through the second quarter.

“The key was just forcing them to shoot jump shots,” Williams said. “We didn’t want them to get anything down low, because that’s how they’ve been beating teams recently. And offensively we’ve just got to play smart, get in there, kick it out, play inside out and take our layups when we can but really knock down 3’s and play to our strong suit. We hit a lot of 3’s - we’re a shooting team.”

Whitman began to build its advantage in the second quarter, taking a 34-25 halftime lead.

Flowers opened the third quarter on a 6-0 run to trim the score to 34-31 with 4:40 to go in the frame, but wouldn’t get any closer. The Vikings led 45-31 after three quarters.

Lun said his team used four different defenses - it undoubtedly felt like more to Flowers - in an effort to keep the larger Jaguars off-balance.

“They have such a big size advantage, so we just knew we had to pack everything in, and we had to live with them hitting a couple of outside shots,” Lun said. “But the weak side rotations were key in our zone - guys were pinching in and rotating out quick. We were still contesting some 3’s but really still pinching in on the two big kids - we don’t see kids like that in Montgomery County very much. I thought we were a little bit sloppy with the ball even throughout the course of the game. We knew we could push tempo on them and beat them down the floor, and I thought we opened the game up when we did that. When we kind of sat in the halfcourt we struggled a bit just with their length, so we’ll take it - we only gave up 44 points and we scored enough to win so that’s what we needed to do.”

Bowles finished with 13 points to lead Flowers, while Chuka Anagbogu finished with 9.