Area prep roundup: Northwest makes progress in region hoops race

With every win and in every game from here on out, both the boys and girls basketball teams at Northwest Whitfield are thinking about one thing — making the state playoffs.

Both teams missed that goal last season, but with Saturday’s sweep of South Forsyth in Tunnel Hill — less than 24 hours after a pair of losses on the road at Sequoyah — the Bruins and Lady Bruins took another step in the right direction. The boys topped the War Eagles 75-59, while the Northwest girls rolled to a 53-30 victory.

Coach Ryan Richards’ Bruins won to improve to 14-7 overall and 7-4 in Region 7-4A, a record that has the Bruins seemingly locked into either the No. 4 or No. 5 spot for the region tournament, which begins in two weeks at Cass. In the meantime, Northwest has road games against Woodland-Bartow and Chattahoochee — currently undefeated in region play — as well as a home game against Cass.

Northwest, Cass, Forsyth Central and Sequoyah are separated by two losses in the region standings with three games to play.

“Getting that No. 4 or No. 5 seed in the tournament is absolutely crucial,” Richards said. “But we are playing the two best teams in the region on the road this week and have a really tough Cass team at home. We might need a little help.”

The top five teams in the 11-team region receive byes in the first round of the region tournament and need only one victory in the tourney to guarantee a spot in the state tournament.

The Bruins — who lost 72-64 on Friday night in Canton in a game that stretched late into the night after more than 25 Northwest Whitfield fans were escorted by police out of the gym — overcame Saturday’s early start by getting off to a fast start. Both Tallon Trew and Daniel Kubin came out hot for Northwest in the first quarter as the Bruins applied pressure to South Forsyth and bolted to a 21-7 lead.

South Forsyth wing Mark McCorkle found his range late in the quarter, burying a pair of 3-pointers from well beyond the arc as the War Eagles scratched back to cut the lead to 21-15. But Tanner Quarles answered with his second 3-pointer of the first frame, and O’Shea Hill’s 15-foot fadeaway jumper at the buzzer stretched the Northwest lead back out to 11 at 26-15.

Northwest maintained that lead through much of the second quarter and took a 39-28 lead to the break, and the Bruins again used a fast start to put the game away. That 11-point lead morphed into a 20-point advantage midway through the third, and South Forsyth never got closer than 14 the rest of the way.

“The biggest thing that this team showed me today was character and guts,” Richards said. “After a long night and an early start today, I challenged them to play 94 feet of pressure basketball, and they responded. We got off to a great start, and they showed again that they are that classic blue-collar bunch that just hustles and gets after it.”

Kubin led all scorers with 24 points, while Trew finished with 18 and Hill added 12.

Northwest has already more than doubled last season’s win total, when the Bruins were 1-13 in the region.

“We are playing more as a team and just hustling a lot more,” Hill said. “We have to keep our momentum up and focus on the playoffs.”

McCorkle was held to just 13 points after the Bruins adjusted their defense and had a player constantly shadowing the South Forsyth guard. Forward Taneil Pike added 10 for the War Eagles (7-15, 2-10).

For the Lady Bruins, it was another pendulum swing for a team that has been consistent this season only in its inconsistency.

After losing to a Sequoyah team that Northwest had totally dominated earlier in the season at home, the Lady Bruins doubled up South Forsyth in the first half, led 26-13 at the break and were never threatened.

“At this point in the season every win means a lot, especially after last night’s loss,” Northwest coach Greg Brown said. “We shot the ball better today, and that has been the story of our season. We need to get hot at the right time, and that time is now.”

Carley Fetzer led all scorers with 15 points, and Kaitlin Wade, Autumn Blackwell and Halle Ford each had seven for the Lady Bruins (12-10, 5-6).

• Heritage-Catoosa girls 52, North Murray 50: Jada Hubbard’s 14-foot bank shot at the buzzer lifted the Lady Generals to victory in Chatsworth, ending a strong comeback bid by the Lady Mountaineers (12-10) in the non-region matchup.

“They called timeout with 10 seconds to go, right after we scored,” North Murray coach Keith Robinette said. “They set up that last little play. We defended how we wanted to defend it, the girl just hit the shot.”

North Murray trailed at the end of each quarter — 15-10, 28-24 and 44-35 — but never completely faded, a point of pride for Robinette on the day he was missing one of his top players, Abigail Bradley, who was attending a Governor’s Honors event. The coach was pleased to see other guards step in her absence.

“Taryn Thomas played her best game, she had eight points,” Robinette said. “Kara Deal had 14 points, she played very well and took over in the fourth quarter a little bit.

“Erin Robinson had 10 points and played very well in the post. The last two nights in particular she’s been playing some good basketball for us. And Hannah Hensley had eight points.”

Robinette said suffering the one-possession loss made his drawing a technical foul for criticizing officials in the first half all that much tougher to take.

“I’ll take the blame for the loss,” he said. “I got a little heated there in the first half ... I hated that for the girls, but they did what they had to do.”

• North Murray boys 69, Heritage-Catoosa 38: Mountaineers junior forward Zach Vess did more than just a little bit of everything as North Murray overwhelmed the Generals in a non-region contest.

Vess finished with 16 points, 17 rebounds and 12 blocks as North Murray (16-6) had four players in double figures for the easy win. Brady Swilling had 13 points, while Tyler Duckett and Austin Horn finished with 11 and 10 points, respectively.

“The good thing is that we had kids coming off of the bench with some quality time as well,” North Murray coach Eric Bishop said. “That makes you feel real good heading into the last week of the regular season.”

• Trion girls 43, Coahulla Creek 33: Coahulla Creek fell to Trion in a non-region game after tightening the deficit to three points heading into the fourth quarter.

Sophomore Haley Reece led the Colts (0-22) with eight points and helped the team take an early lead.

“She’s been the leading scorer the last two games and is playing really well,” Colts coach David Friend said. “And she’s doing a great job setting everything up for us.”

The Colts led 14-11 at the end of the first quarter but got in some foul trouble in the second quarter and trailed 27-20 heading into halftime. The Colts narrowed the gap to 31-28 in the third before letting the game slip away in the final period.

“We played a really strong first and third quarter and did the same thing the other night,” Friend said. “We’ve just got to play better in the fourth quarter.”

• Trion boys 80, Coahulla Creek 61: The Colts had their best offensive output of the season as all 10 players who dressed out scored in the non-region loss on the road.

“We played our worst game of the year last night (a 72-35 loss to Sonoraville), and came back and played really well,” coach Matthew Queener said.

Hunter Williams led the Colts (1-21) with 11 points, while Erick Dominguez, Levi Wilson and Miguel Paniagua all finished the night with nine. Alex Jarjoura led the team with eight rebounds.

Wrestling

• Five Northwest wrestlers earned medals at the Burnt Mountain Classic, a two-day, 19-team traditional tournament hosted by Pickens High.

Alex Reynolds (132 pounds), Dustin Pendergrass (145) and Brandon Davenport (152) each took fourth, while Jared Haws (170) and Victor Lopez (285) were fifth.

Lopez, a first-year wrestler, got the chance to show his progress with senior starter Adam Selby on a college football recruiting visit this weekend.

“We wrestled three or four JV kids,” Bruins coach Allen Tucker said. “It was a good weekend to let some of our young kids wrestle.”

However, several starters got valuable mat time with the traditional postseason set to start this week. The Bruins head to the Area 7-4A tournament at Cass on Friday; sectional and state tournaments are set for the following weekends.

“We got to see some kids we don’t normally see but that are in our classification,” Tucker said. “We’ll see them in sectionals or at state.”

Tucker did not know the team’s final place at the event.

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