Winterboro (AL) – Monday’s boys roundup: Winterboro defeats Donoho and appears to be clinching the top seed for Class 1A Area 8 following JCA’s upset of Faith Christian; plus highlights of games reported to East Alabama Sports Today
MONDAY’S BOYS GAMES Anniston 59, Alexandria 50
B.B. B.B.
Gaylesville 61, Wellborn 51
Hokes Bluff 63, Southside 37
Jacksonville Christian 60, Faith Christian 56
Ohatchee, Coosa Christ 50
Saks at Cleburne County
Wadley 73, Ranburne 72
Pleasant Valley 48, Westbrook 76
Winterboro 69, Donoho 65
Al Muskewitz
Blake Hanson, the Winterboro boys’ team coach, left the gym Monday night feeling confident that they had done everything possible to win the area regular-season title. Although the Bulldogs will not know for sure until Tuesday’s Wadley area tournament meeting, they felt pretty good based upon what they knew.
The Bulldogs are likely to receive positive news. They took care of their own business, beating Donoho 69-65, then anxiously awaited the outcome of the Faith Christian-Jacksonville Christian game in Anniston to settle a complicated set of tiebreakers to avoid a dreaded coin toss.
The Bulldogs found out that JCA had stunned the Lions, giving them the tiebreaker to host next week’s Class 1A Area 8 boys tournament. Hanson, the Bulldogs first-year head coach, said that he told them they would find out tomorrow morning at 10:15. “I told them that right now, we are tied for first and it is out of our control. “We did everything possible to get us into this position. We came out strong and fought Friday against Wadley. Tonight, we fought hard. We hope it goes in our favor.
Faith and Winterboro finished at 6-2 in the region. They split during the season, but had the same record against all other league members. A recently installed tiebreaker that compared their winning percentage in non area Class 1A games was the difference. Faith was 3-1 in the games following Monday’s loss. The Bulldogs were now 2-0 and had beaten Talladega County Central twice. If they had beaten JCA, the Lions would have been the top seed. Hanson stated, “I feel like the boys deserve it. They came out and did all they could,” Hanson commented after hearing the Faith-JCA score. “They worked hard the last few games and did everything I asked. So they certainly deserve it. I’m glad that we should be able get the 1. [read more…]
JACKSONVILLE CHRISTIAN sixty, FAITH CHRISTIAN55: Although the Lions knew exactly what they needed to do in order to win the top seed for Class 1A Area 8 they fell short of their goal. After a quick start they were unable to make enough layups to overcome JCA’s fast shooting from the 3-point line. Braxton Brown made six 3s, and the Thunder had 12 overall. His team turned a 17-11 deficit to 33-30 at halftime with four 3s by Brown in the second quarter.
Cory Hughes, Faith coach, said that the first quarter was exactly as I expected. “We leapt out quite well and thought it would track from here. It didn’t. We missed 14 layups after they started to knock down everything in the first quarter. We missed 14 more layups in the fourth quarter. The shot chart is unbelievable. There are only ‘X’s throughout the entire paint.
The only thing the Lions needed to win was the non-area match and they would have won the No. They were the No. 1 seed in their region. They were three down at halftime when Winterboro’s victory over Donoho tied them with Faith in the area standings was final.
Hughes stated, “We just have to do the best we can and wait to see what happens.” I knew we would accomplish that. We started out looking great, but then their hot shooting got the better of us.
“We knew exactly where the game was, but we didn’t do our bit.” Sometimes you just need a blackeye. Maybe this is our blackeye that will get us moving, but it scares the hell out of me that we are so inconsistent this late in season.
Both scoring threats were kept in check by the Lions. Ethan Fair of JCA was held by the Lions, but Brown scored a game-high 22 point. Noah Lee and Cam Moses each added 11 points. Faith’s Thomas Curlee scored 16 points. Yashi Arevalo was the Lions’ leading scorer with 21 points. Brown made a pair free throws in 32 seconds to give the Thunder a six-point advantage. Lee extended the lead to eight by adding two more points with 16 seconds remaining. Faith scored a 3-point at buzzer to win the final margin.
OHATCHEE 71 COOSA CHRISTIAN50:Jesse Baswell made three 3-pointers, leading Ohatchee by 15 points. Colby Hester added two more to his total of 10 points. Luke Vinson scored 11 points for the Indians.
