As the game between Apalachee and Heritage progressed duirng the Region 8-AAAA tournament Saturday, things seemed to be lining up in favor of coach Kevin Morris’ Wildcats — at least on paper.
Unfornately, for AHS, games are not played, or won, on paper, and Heritage would manage to take a 56-44 win in the quarterfinal game and assure itself a trip to the upcoming state tournament. For Morris and his Wildcats, they were left to ponder what might have been.
“Going into the game, if you had told me their best player would score seven points and their second best player would score eight and foul out with four minutes to go, I would have bet a lot of money we would have won the game,” Morris said. “However, it didn’t work out that way.”
In breaking the contest down, the Wildcat coach saw his team turn in a 6-of-24 performance from the foul line. The Heritage Patiots, by comparison, were 65 percent from the charity stripe.
“We had a few more turnovers so they gave them some more scoring opportunities,” Morris said. “We did a lot of things good, but it would not go in the basket for us. We go in and get fouled and it turned out to be a bad thing.”
The end of the season is always tough for any team, especially the seniors. Morris was thinking about how the loss meant the closing out of careers for his.
For Chaun Gresham, Clayton Barber, Dennis Whitley, Dillon Moon and Andrew Sanderson, Saturday’s contest against Heritage was the final game in their Wildcat careers.
“I hate it for our seniors because I know the improvements they’ve made from when they were freshmen to now,” Morris said. “I just hate it their high school careers are over. I hope they take some of the lessons they’ve learned and carry those lessons with them to be good, productive citizens and give back to the community.”
