Virginia recruit McKneely leads Poca Dots to WV state basketball title

By Jerry Ratcliffe

Isaac McKneely scored 22 points to help lead No. 1 seeded Poca to a 65-48 win over Bluefield to claim the 2022 West Virginia Class AA state basketball championship on Saturday.

McKneely, the two-time West Virginia Player of the Year, will be headed to UVA to play for Tony Bennett next season.

The Dots outscored their opponents 168-99 in three state tournament games for Coach Allen Osborne, who claimed his 706th career victory.

In Friday’s semifinals, McKneely scored 26 points, including a 9-of-13 shooting performance from the field and 5-of-9 from the 3-point line in a 60-32 win over Ravenswood.

After that game, Ravenswood coach Mick Price said: “The biggest mistake I ever made as a coach: Isaac McKneeley’s dad in 1999 coached baseball at Ravenswood as an assistant coach on a team that won a state championship and somehow I didn’t keep him in Jackson County. Somehow we let him get away. Now that’s a bad recruiting job.”