Amid the Jefferson’s busy subregion slate, the Dragons have pressing non-region business to attend to.
The Dragons attempt to rid themselves of a two-game losing streak to archrival Commerce Saturday at 7:30 p.m. on the road when these long-standing foes meet again.
The Tigers won the last matchup 46-44 (Dec. 9) and blew out Jefferson 67-46 in the final meeting of the 2010-2011 season.
The Dragons — now losers of three out of the last five in this series — certainly aren’t used to this. After all, Jefferson completely owned this rivalry for at least a decade.
“We’d won like 22 in a row against them and then we split two years ago and we split last year,” Jefferson coach Bolling DuBose said. “Commerce the last two years has had really good teams, and they’re better this year than I thought they were going to be.”
The Tigers have won at least 20 games the last two seasons under coach Chad Bridges and reached the state tournaments the last three years.
Commerce is 5-5 on the season with its most recent win coming against Class AAAA Madison County.
“So I think that they’ve got to be playing well, and they deserved to beat us the first time,” DuBose said.
The Commerce game continues a five-game road stand for Jefferson, which played subregion foe Hart County in Hartwell Tuesday.
The Dragons have a subregion game against Oglethorpe County (Friday, 8:30 p.m.) prior to facing Commerce.
DuBose certainly doesn’t want his team thinking about Commerce prematurely “because subregion games are more important.”
But come Saturday, Jefferson will try to get back on track in this rivalry — especially after the Dragons watched an 11-point fourth-quarter lead slip away last time.
“I don’t know why we were flat that night but I do think that our kids have kind of set their sights on next Saturday and redeeming themselves,” DuBose said.
The Jefferson-Commerce girls series continues as well Saturday. The Lady Dragons beat the Lady Tigers 56-13 in the last meeting and haven’t lost to Commerce in years. Tipoff for the girls is 6 p.m. at Commerce.
“Again, it’s one of those rivalry games where anything can happen,” Lady Dragon coach Jason Gibson said.
