Jacksonville, AL – Huffman adjusts to Oxford’ zone, comes to life after scoring its first basket midway through first quarter, eliminates Yellow Jackets in tight regional semifinal
By Al Muskewitz
The players on the Oxford basketball team will wake up Friday morning to a day unlike any other they’ve experienced in the last four months. There is no practice. There are no meetings. There are no games. The basketball season is over.
The Yellow Jackets’ season, an over-achieving year in every sense for perhaps the youngest Oxford team coach Joel VanMeter has ever had, ended in a familiar place Thursday. After a quick start that definitely got their opponent’s attention, the Jackets fell to Huffman 57-50 in the Class 6A Northeast Regional semifinals at Jacksonville State.
It was the Jackets’ seventh straight appearance in the regionals. It also was the fifth straight year they’ve made their exit in the semifinals, a fact that wasn’t lost on VanMeter. The Vikings, meanwhile, reached the Northeast Regional final for the eighth year in a row; they will play Mountain Brook for the trip to the Final Four Tuesday at 2:15 p.m. “I think about that every day,” VanMeter said after he stepped away from the formal post-round interview. “When I’m talking to them in the locker room just a minute ago, it comes down this: We’re not there yet. How much work do you want to put in to get there? And I’m talking about myself as well.
“You see other teams be able to move on and get to the Final Four and you want a piece of that, no doubt. No doubt. But never does it diminish from each group what they were able to accomplish. “But, yes, I think about that every day. I’m dying to get there, but we’re going to get there based on work. We’re going to earn it and we’re going to earn it with the guys that put in the extra work they need to put in for us to get better. It would help if one of them would grow to be about 6-7.” The Vikings (22-10) had more experience (12 seniors to 1) and more size, but the Yellow Jackets (15-15) weren’t intimidated and held their own.
Huffman grabbed 15 offensive rebounds, the Jackets had 14. There was one play in the fourth quarter when 6-4 Oxford sophomore Jayden Lewis ripped away an offensive rebound from 6-6 Huffman senior Brandon Tinsley and laid it back in to get the Jackets within seven. The Jackets were only outrebounded by two in the game. Tinsley had nine boards to go with 11 points, but Oxford’s top three rebounders – freshman Jaylen Alexander, T.J. Allen and Lewis – all smaller in comparison, had 8, 8 and 7, respectively. In an effort to offset that size, Oxford came out in a matchup zone with “a lot of different rules to it” and it admittedly gave the Vikings fits. The Jackets held Huffman scoreless for the first four minutes of the game, jumping out to an 8-0 lead. It didn’t help the Vikings that they were missing a bunch of shots around the basket they regularly make, but once they scored their first basket, they settled in and it was game on. [read more…]
