Miller School redefined rebound dominance Thursday night at the expense of Timberlake Christian School.

Boasting a 44-14 edge on the boards, Miller School coasted to a 59-35 victory over Timberlake in the quarterfinals of the Virginia Independent Conference Tournament at Turner Gym.

"Had we been able to keep those guys off the boards, we would've been OK," Timberlake coach Charlie Williams said.

The guys Williams was referring to were Miller's frontline of Kevin Johnson and Sharif Brown. Brown grabbed 11 rebounds to go along with his game-high 24 points, and Johnson had 17 rebounds and 11 points.

"We wanted to handle 55 (Johnson) and 53 (Brown) going in," Williams said. "But its easy to talk about and harder to do it."

Most of Miller's offensive rebounds resulted in easy stickbacks as the smaller Timberlake squad failed to box out throughout the game.

After getting off to a slow start, Miller (8-8) took a 10-8 lead after the first quarter. But in the second quarter, Miller opened with a 10-2 advantage with 4:05 until halftime.

Timberlake (15-9) then scored on four straight possessions and when Jason Spear hit a running one-hander in the paint, the Tornadoes had pulled to within 24-17 with two minutes left until intermission.

But that's as close as Timberlake would get as Brown scored two consecutive layups to close the half.

"Yeah, we sort of dominated the boards," Miller coach Joe Josephson said. "That was a deciding factor in the game. We wanted to take it inside."

In actuality though, Miller appeared to be content to shoot outside jumpers for most of the first half. Timberlake used a 2-3 matchup zone in a vain attempt to stop Miller's powerful frontline.

The problem was, however, when Miller would miss from the outside, Brown or Johnson would be there to grab the rebound.

"We had 'em shooting where we wanted to," said Williams. "But we just couldn't keep them off the boards. We didn't box out."

Even though Timberlake trailed 28-17 at halftime, the Tornados were still close enough to make a run in the second half. So Williams told his team to change defenses to a triangle-in-two to contain Brown and Johnson.

"I told them," Williams said, "they've got 28 points (in the first half) and the big kids had 24 of them."

But Miller was still too strong, building a 34-19 lead on two Johnson stickbacks and a Brown layup. Timberlake stayed close behind the shooting of senior Jon Phillips, who scored a team-high 12 points.

The Tornadoes cut the lead to 37-27 to start the final quarter when junior Jason Spear scored two of his 11 points on a driving one-hander. But Miller responded with an 18-4 run to put the game away.

"Their size was the key," Phillips said. "We couldn't box them out. We knew coming in they were tough rebounders. We just had one shot and that was it."

Timberlake center James Napier, who went toe-to-toe with Miller's big men, gave his opponents credit for the win.

"They were real big and so wide, there was not much you could do," said Napier, who finished with six points. "Their ability to rebound and their inside game was superior to our inside game. It was a rough game."

In other VIC games Thursday, Fishburne Military Academy defeated Roanoke Catholic 71-58, Eastern Mennonite rolled past North Cross 72-43, and Carlisle routed Hargrave Military 87-65.

In all likelihood, Timberlake's season is now over. The Tornados entered Thursday night's game ranked No. 8 among private schools, while Miller was No. 10.

The private school state tournament only invites the top eight schools to its season-ending tourney and unless several schools drop out, Timberlake will not be invited.

Still, Williams was not upset Thursday.

"We had a wonderful season," he said. "This is a great group of guys and we played a tremendous amount of close games. We had a super season."