AHSAA PLAYOFFS: Catholic rolls to area tourney championship
Trinity’s Andrew McNees battles for a shot against Catholic’s DJ Jamerson in the Knights’ win over the Wildcats. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
The championship game of the 3A Area 6 tournament would be played by two teams with differing styles. Which team would be able to control the tempo?
“They like to set up plays,” Catholic junior forward TJ Dudley said. “They like to run their plays and move around a lot on offense. With us playing great defense and running up and down the court, moving it, they had to play at our pace.”
Catholic jumped out to a 9-0 lead, controlling a tempo from which Trinity never recovered as the Knights rolled to a 59-47 win in the Catholic gym on Saturday night to capture their third consecutive area tournament title.
In winning its 12th consecutive game, Catholic (17-5) earned the right to host Reeltown in a sub-regional game on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. Trinity (16-8) will travel to Dadeville for a sub-regional game on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.
And while Trinity was never far behind, trimming the deficit to five points on several occasions, the Wildcats could never overcome the early deficit against the Knights.
“That’s the number one thing you can’t do against them,” Trinity coach Matt Arrighi said. “When you get behind them, it kind of takes you out of the style of game you really want to make it. We ended up having to be a lot more aggressive in our defense than we really wanted to be. If you’re not making shots in your offense, you’re having to be aggressive in your defense for too long and it’s just not going to work out against them.”
Catholic scored 15 points in the first quarter, 16 in the second and 15 in the third while Trinity tried to keep pace. The Wildcats fell behind by 18 points in the third quarter, then began to chip away, gradually trimming the deficit to five points.
“Early, I thought part of our issues were forcing shots early in the possession that weren’t open shots,” Arrighi said. “When you do that a lot of times, you end up missing bad and they’re going the other way in transition. The only thing I felt we did differently was we settled in and started sticking to our game plan and got them in foul trouble. That got us to the line and slowed the game down a little bit.”
The Knights were still within six points three minutes into the final period before a DJ Jamerson tip-in and a LJ Green layup pushed the lead back out to double digits.
“It was really on us,” Dudley said. “We started getting in foul trouble. When we were up, we only had two or three fouls, but toward the end of the quarter they started getting in the bonus and then the double bonus and started hitting all their free throws, which just brought the game closer.”
Green had 20 points and five assists, while Jamerson had a triple-double with 17 points, 17 rebounds and 10 blocked shots. Matthew Reardon added eight points and four rebounds, followed by Myles Butler with six points, five assists and three rebounds.
“We didn’t play smart all the time but I thought we played hard for the most part,” Catholic coach Mike Curry said. “It’s like that every time with them. It’s a hard-fought game and it’s going to be a back-and-forth game.”
Curry wasn’t surprised to see his team lose its commanding lead in the third quarter.
“We’ve got to be a more mature team,” he said. “They are a very loose group and that’s a good thing. And it’s a bad thing. I don’t even know if they knew they were playing for the area tournament championship.”
Parker Hughes led Trinity with 14 points but was held to just three field goals in the game. Jon Cole Portis added 11, followed by Beau O’Ferrell with seven and Andrew NcNees with six.
GIRLS BASKETBALL
Brewbaker Tech, 33, Pike Road 26
PIKE ROAD -- Jada Roberts scored 20 of the Patriots’ 26 points but it wasn’t enough as the Rams captured the 5A Area 5 tournament championship with a 33-26 win in the Pike Road gym on Friday night.
The Patriots were playing without leading scorer Jazz Johnson, who suffered an ankle injury three days earlier in the area tournament semifinal win over Tallassee, Johnson was the only returning player with any varsity experience from last year’s team that reached the 3A semifinals.
Jill Baine had 17 points to lead Brew Tech, which will play host to Sylacauga in a sub-regional game on Monday at 6:30 p.m.
Pike Road (12-11) will travel to Talladega to play the Tigers in a sub-regional game on Monday at 6:30 p.m.