Adairsville had four players reach double figures as it held off a late rally to knock off another sub-region foe at home, 71-60.
Coach Jacob Travis said it was a good night scoring-wise for his Tigers.
“We scored well. We shot the ball well,” Travis said. “Austin Greenfield hit three 3 [pointers]; Roderic King hit three 3s. We shot 15 for 22 from the free throw line.”
King, who added 12 rebounds and five steals, finished with 18 points to lead Adairsville while Greenfield and Chanse Fuleki scored 16 apiece followed by Zach Coker’s 17 and 10 rebounds.
Up 46-41 to start the fourth quarter, the Tigers appeared to benefit when Indians small forward Matt Catanzano fouled out late in the game.
“We caught a break with their best player, Matt Catanzano, in foul trouble. He eventually fouled out,” Travis said.
Still, Armuchee managed to threaten the outcome of the game with Catanzano unable to play his usual minutes.
“They’re a very well-coached group. They shot the ball extremely well,” added Travis of the Ray Tucker-led Indians. “They got back within four in the fourth and then we scored some points.”
The Tigers played the ballgame with the type of mindset their coach seemed to appreciate.
“We mentally played the game with an attack mode and did a really good job, [and] had some guys step up for us,” Travis said.
Adairsville doubled Armuchee’s output in the first quarter to take an 18-9 lead, and after the Indians recovered a few of those points back on the scoreboard, the Tigers held a 31-26 edge at the half. Both teams tallied 15 points in the third as the lead remained at five.
Consistency has been a hammering-home point for Adairsville, and Travis knows his team can play well — it just has to do so game after game.
“We want to be consistent. We’ve been talking about being consistent in practice and games, and we have guys that can do it,” added the Tigers coach, whose team defeated one of the sub-region’s top teams, Model, last month in Adairsville’s gym.
The victory Tuesday night was another notch on the Tigers’ belt against a quality sub-region opponent, but a date with another solid team awaits — meaning there is little time for any celebration.
“They’ve been really hot lately,” Travis said of River Ridge, whom Adairsville hosts at 8:30 p.m. on Friday. “We got to get ready for them already.”
The Tigers (5-7, 3-1 Region 7A-AA) close out the week with a trip to White, where they face the rival Cass Colonels at 7:30 p.m.
Armuchee 52,
Adairsville girls 28
Tuesday night’s girls basketball matchup with Armuchee presented an opportunity for Adairsville to even its sub-region record, and Lady Tigers coach Kent Howard thought things looked favorable for his young team.
The Lady Indians, however, benefited as Adairsville harmed itself with miscues on the offensive end while giving up numerous shot attempts on the other end in a 52-28 defeat.
“I felt like we prepared for Armuchee. It was a sub-region game; it’s a big game, home game,” Howard said. “I felt like we could compete with ’em; I felt like we could beat ’em. We turned the ball over too many times.”
Cassidy Howren led the Lady Tigers with 9 points and Stephanie Kuhrt added 6.
The Lady Tigers trailed by nine points — 16-7 — following the first quarter, and by halftime, that deficit had reached 20 with the Lady Indians ahead 36-16.
Howard credited Armuchee for giving itself second chances at the offensive end, which he called the stat of the game.
“They outrebounded us about two to one,” he said of the Lady Indians. “They got second chance points on rebounds.”
Armuchee added 10 more points in the third quarter to take a 46-24 advantage into the fourth.
The Lady Indians, Howard said, are a team with plenty of tradition — a path he would like to see his program carve.
“We are hopefully building to get to that point,” the first-year Adairsville coach said. “We’re getting better, but when you turn the ball over and get outrebounded like that, you don’t have much of a chance.”
The Lady Tigers (3-9, 1-3 Region 7A-AA) won just two games all of last season but have a chance to double that total with their next win. Adairsville hosts River Ridge in a 7 p.m. sub-region game on Friday before traveling to White to face Bartow County rival Cass Saturday at 6 p.m.