It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t always pretty, but the Apalachee High School varsity boys basketball team held off visiting East Jackson 44-37 Tuesday night.
Taking the lead with 2:30 left on a basket from Jamarri Fuller, the Wildcats (1-1) outscored the Panthers 6-0 down the stretch for their first win of 2010-11. Coach Kevin Morris was quick to point out just how young this year’s AHS squad is.
“We ended the game with five sophomores on the floor,” the Wildcat coach said. “We rotated in a junior and senior, but of our last seven players in the game, five were sophomores. If people will just be patient with us and if we can be patient with ourselves, we will be OK.”
AHS raced out to a 7-0 lead, but the lead would be down to two points by the end of the first quarter. East Jackson trailed by four points at halftime, but finally overtook the Wildcats in the third quarter holding a slim 34-33 lead.
It took AHS nearly half of the third quarter before it scored its first points of the second half coming on a 3-point play from Rakim Peters. Morris called three timeouts alone in the third quarter to try and get a handle on the situation. The coach said it all goes back to youth.
“We have to understand that we may face a 1-3-1 and we haven’t practiced against it,” the coach said. “We will have to draw it up on the sidelines and go with it. So many of the players this year have never been in a varsity game or even had on a varsity jersey.”
Peters finished Tuesday night with 10 points while Jermaine Smith added eight, including six from the foul line. Cameron Blakely also scored eight points.
East Jackson missed four costly free throws in the final two minutes while Smith and Blakely both were 2-of-2 in the final minutes. Overall, the Wildcats were 10-of-17 from the foul line.
“We did a good job of handling their press late,” Morris said. “We showed maturity in that situation. The game was nip and tuck the whole way. It was ugly for a while and tough to watch.”
Showing small measures of improvement each day will be vital for the young squad, its coach said.
“We want to try and get 1 percent better each day,” Morris said. “I’m not even worried about getting 10 percent better. If we can just get 1 percent better each day then by January and February, we will be able to hold our own. We are having to sink or swim right now with our young players. We’ve had to kick them out of the boat and right into the water.”
The coach said he was impressed with how his team practiced Monday following Saturday’s season opening loss to Walnut Grove. Morris said he expected that same level of concentration even after a win.
“We have to be mentally ready,” Morris said. “We had a lot of opportunities to throw in the towel tonight but we came together as a team and handled the adversity well.”
AHS hosts Loganville Friday at 8:30 p.m. and Monroe Area Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.
