Jacksonville, AL – Huffman adapts to Oxford zone, and becomes more lively after scoring its first basket midway through the first quarter. It eliminating Yellow Jackets in tight regional semifinal
Written by Al Musewitz
The players of Oxford’s Oxford basketball squad will awake on each day on Friday to an experience unlike any other during the past four months. There’s no practice. There aren’t any gatherings. There aren’t any games. The basketball season is over.
The Yellow Jackets’ season, an impressive year in every way for the most youthful Oxford coaching staff director Joel VanMeter has ever had and ended in a familiar location on Thursday. After a fast start that definitely caught their opponents’ interest however, the Jackets were defeated by Huffman with a score of 57-50. Class 6A Northeast Regional semifinals at Jacksonville State.
The regional was Jackets 7th straight time at the regionals. It was also the fifth consecutive year that they’ve lost from the semi-finals an aspect which was well-known to VanMeter. The Vikings have also made it to the Northeast Regional final for the eighth consecutive year and will take on Mountain Brook for the trip to the Final Four Tuesday at 2:15 p.m. “I contemplate it every each day,” VanMeter said after leaving the post-round formal interview. “When I’m talking with players at the end of the day in the locker room an instant ago, the message is that we’re still not quite there. What amount of work will you invest to get there? This is me too.
“You observe other teams being capable of moving on and make it to the Final Four and you want an opportunity to participate absolutely. No doubt. However, it does not diminish from any group what they could accomplish. “But Yes I think about it all the time. I’m aching to be there however, we’ll achieve it based on our the work we do. We’ll get it, and achieve it through the men who put in the extra effort they have to put in to be better. It would be helpful if one of them grows to approximately 7 or 6 inches tall.” They Vikings (22-10) were more experienced with greater experienced (12 seniors to one) and bigger However, they were not intimidated by the Yellow Jackets (15-15) weren’t in any way intimidated, and they were able to hold their own.
Huffman had 15 offensive rebounds. The Jackets have 14. There was a play during the fourth quarter in which the 6-4 Oxford sophomore Jayden Lewis picked up an offensive rebound off the 6-6 Huffman Senior Brandon Tinsley and laid it back into his Jackets just seven points behind. The Jackets were outrebounded only by two during the contest. Tinsley scored nine boards, which was in addition to 11 points. Oxford’s three top rebounders – the freshman Jaylen Alexander T.J. Allen and Lewis who were all smaller in contrast, scored eight and seven respectively. To counter the size of those players, Oxford came out in the matchup zone, which has “a variety of rules” and, admittedly, caused the Vikings the fits. The Jackets were able to keep Huffman without scoring for the initial four minutes of the game, and then jumped out to a 8-0 lead. It wasn’t helping the Vikings by not having several shots in the vicinity of the basket that they typically shoot, but once they had scored the first shot, they settled down and were in the game. [read more…]
