PREP HOOPS: Catholic finishes season with sweep of St. James

By TIM GAYLE

Catholic tuned up for its upcoming area tournament with a 64-38 win over St. James on Senior Night in the Catholic gym on Friday night.

Senior Justin Bufford closed out his final regular season in style, scoring 28 points, grabbing 10 rebounds and blocking 11 shots to record a triple-double on the night. TJ Dudley had 10 points and 10 rebounds and Myles Butler had nine points, five rebounds, five steals and four assists.

Catholic built a 17-5 lead at the end of the first quarter before going into a little lull in the second period as St. James pulled back into the contest. The Knights responded by scoring 17 points in the third quarter and coasting through the fourth period to improve to 25-4.

“I tried to get some guys some minutes,” Catholic coach Mike Curry said. “I told the guys we’re going to need everybody (in the postseason). We can’t rely on one, two or three guys, it’s going to take a team effort for us to get where we want to. I was pleased with the outcome, but I’m a coach so we can always play a little bit better.”

Defensively, the Knights held the top two players for St. James, Bradley Thomas and Andrew Sadie, to three field goals in the game. Thomas scored 10 points at the free-throw line and finished with 14, while Sadie scored in the final minutes against the reserves and had just two points.

KJ Jackson added 13 for St. James (11-12).

“During tournament time, you always want to tell your kids you want to be playing well at the end, but that’s not the case with us,” St. James coach Nigel Card said. “We had a little streak toward the end of the season where we won three in a row, but the other night at ACA kind of brought back some (bad) tendencies that we’ve had all year – we weren’t very effective – and now there’s some carryover. It’s going to be a tough road to climb now.”

St. James returns to action next Thursday in Union Springs, facing Bullock County in the opening round of the 3A Area 5 tournament at 6 p.m. Catholic will host the 4A Area 4 tournament and will play Alabama Christian on Wednesday at 7 p.m.

Catholic girls 47, St. James 37

Alanna Aiken scored six of her seven points in the final quarter after St. James had trimmed the deficit to a point, boosting the Catholic girls to a 10-point victory on Friday night.

“It was huge to win tonight,” Catholic coach Jill Clark said. “We’ve been playing well, but our shots have not fallen for us. Tonight, we had some shots to fall. Last night (in a loss to Elmore County), we were 8 for 44 (from the field). The game before that (in a loss to ACA), we were 11 for 55. I kept telling them (on Thursday) I hated that we lost, we should get rewarded because we’re doing things better. Tonight, that paid off.”

Catholic (13-7) led for the entire game and took a 10-point lead into the fourth quarter, only to watch as Lucy Edwards, Hannah Grace Griggs and Chelsey Craig each hit 3-pointers to deficit to a point. Catholic’s Harper Howell finally hit a basket to end the drought. Craig answered with a free throw to make it 37-35 but the Trojans would get no closer as the Knights scored the next 10 points to finish off the Trojans.

“It’s easy when you’ve been in that rut that when somebody comes back you go, ‘Oh no, here we go again,’ and just give up, but in the huddle they were, ‘we’re finishing this,’ and they did,” Clark said. “They did a great job tonight of executing what we wanted them to execute, hitting shots and playing good team basketball.”

Howell had 12 points, followed by Lorren Pharrams with eight and Aiken with seven as the Knights turn their attention to the 4A Area 4 tournament on Tuesday, where they will face Alabama Christian in an opening round game at Trinity on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m.

Griggs had 11 points and Danielle Greene added 10 for St. James, which will face Montgomery Academy in the 3A Area 5 tournament at Pike Road on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.