Winterboro, AL – Monday’s boys roundup: Winterboro holds off Donoho, appears to clinch the top seed in Class 1A Area 8 after JCA upsets Faith Christian; plus highlights from games reported to East Alabama Sports Today
MONDAY’S BOYS GAMES
Anniston 59, Alexandria 50
B.B. Comer 69, Thorsby 32
Gaylesville 61, Wellborn 51
Hokes Bluff 63, Southside 37
Jacksonville Christian 60, Faith Christian 55
Ohatchee 71, Coosa Christian 50
Saks at Cleburne County
Wadley 73, Ranburne 72
Westbrook 76, Pleasant Valley 48
Winterboro 69, Donoho 65
By Al Muskewitz
Blake Hanson left the gym Monday night confident his Winterboro boys team did everything in its power to have a chance to win an area regular-season championship. The Bulldogs won’t know definitively until Tuesday morning’s area tournament meeting in Wadley, but they were feeling pretty good based on what they knew.
The news for the Bulldogs is likely to be favorable. 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.
About an hour after their game ended, the Bulldogs learned JCA stunned the Lions to apparently give them the tiebreaker to host the Class 1A Area 8 boys tournament next week. “I told them we’ll find out tomorrow morning at 10, that’s when we’ve got our meeting,” said Hanson, the Bulldogs’ first-year head coach. “I told them right now we’re tied for first, it’s out of our hands. “We did everything we could to put us in this position. We came out hard and fought Friday (against Wadley), came out hard and fought tonight. Hope it falls in our favor.”
Both Winterboro and Faith finished 6-2 in the area. They split with each other during the season and had the same record against everyone else in the league. The difference was a recently installed tiebreaker involving their winning percentage in non-area Class 1A games. The Bulldogs were 2-0, having beaten Talladega County Central twice, while Faith finished 3-1 in those games after Monday’s loss. The Lions would have won the top seed had they beaten JCA. “I feel like my boys deserve it, they came out and did everything they could,” Hanson said after learning the Faith-JCA score. “They played hard these last few games, did everything I’ve asked them to do, so they definitely deserve it, so I’m glad we should be able to get the 1. [read more…]
JACKSONVILLE CHRISTIAN 60, FAITH CHRISTIAN 55: The Lions knew what they had to do to claim the top seed in Class 1A Area 8, but after a fast start they succumbed to too many missed layups and JCA’s hot shooting from the 3-point arc. Braxton Brown hit six 3s and the Thunder hit 12 as a team. He hit four of them in the second quarter to help his team turn a 17-11 deficit into a 33-30 halftime lead.
“The first quarter was exactly what I thought it would be,” Faith coach Cory Hughes said. “We jumped out pretty good and figured it would track from there and it didn’t. They just started knocking down everything in the second quarter and we missed like 14 layups. The fourth quarter we missed another 14 layups. You won’t believe the shot chart, just ‘X’s in the entire paint.”
All the Lions had to do was win the non-area game and they’d have clinched the No. 1 seed in their area. They were down by three at halftime by the time Winterboro’s win over Donoho that tied it with Faith in the area standings went final.
“We always just have to do what we can do and see how the cards fall,” Hughes said. “I figured we would do that. We came out looking good and then I think we let their hot shooting get a hold of us.
“We knew where the game was at, we just didn’t do our part. Sometimes you need a black eye, maybe this is our black eye that will get us going, but it scares me we’re this inconsistent this late in the season.”
Both teams’ main scoring threats were held in relative check. The Lions locked down JCA’s Ethan Fair, but Brown went off for a game-high 22 points. Cam Moses and Noah Lee added 11 apiece. Faith’s Thomas Curlee was held to 16 points. Yashi Arevalo led the Lions with 21. Brown hit a pair of free throws with 32 seconds left to give the Thunder at six-point lead. Lee pushed the lead to eight with two more with 16 seconds to go. Faith hit a 3-point at the buzzer for the final margin.
OHATCHEE 71, COOSA CHRISTIAN 50: Jesse Baswell hit three 3-pointers while leading Ohatchee with 15 points, and Colby Hester hit two on the way to 10 points. Luke Vinson added 11 points for the Indians.
