The Greeneville boys fought back in the second half on Tuesday night, but Alcoa made the final push to the finish and captured a 64-55 win.
“We came out a little flat and were on our heels early. But in the second half we moved the ball better. Yordan (Mills) got hot and made some shots, and that was a huge factor,” Greeneville coach Brad Woolsey said. “We just need to continue to compete and continue to support each other. I felt like our bench was really in it tonight. The next step is to now hold each other accountable.”
Greeneville started the third quarter trailing 33-24, but five quick points from Yordan Mills provided a much-needed spark.
Taren Claridy closed the gap to 37-34 when he attacked the rim and scored three-points the hard way. The Greene Devils took the lead for the first time when Claridy sent a pass from the block to Zy Neal in the corner for a three-pointer that made it 41-39.
A short jumper from Braylen Kidwell and two more free throws from Neal kept Greeneville in front, but with nine seconds left the Devils fouled Jay Kirk.
Kirk missed both free throws, but the Tornadoes grabbed the rebound and with two seconds left Kirk laid one off the glass to even the score at 45-45.
Free-throw rebounds proved costly down the stretch for Greeneville as Alcoa took advantage of the extra opportunities despite shooting just 2-of-7 at the stripe over the final eight minutes.
“We gave up some big offensive rebounds on the free-throw line tonight,” Woolsey said, “We gave up some big offensive rebounds. Sometimes it’s a physical thing where we aren’t big enough, but in most cases it’s a mental thing where we aren’t taking it as serious as we need to.”
A breakaway dunk by Claridy and two three-pointers from Mills gave the lead back to Greeneville at 53-50.
The Devils’ final points came with 3:35 left to play when Claridy took in a pass from Mills and scored in the paint.
Alcoa scored the final 12 points on Tuesday to finish the night with a nine-point victory.
Kirk scored eight of those 12 points and finished Tuesday’s game with 36 points for the Tornadoes.
“Looking back our offensive execution needed to be better. We tried to switch things up down the stretch. They were really sitting on Zy so we tried to move things around, but what happened was we didn’t get any ball movement,” Woolsey said.
Tuesday’s action started with Kirk scoring nine points as the Tornadoes took a 9-2 lead in 2:27.
Claridy sparked Greeneville by taking a steal the other way, and when Neal came down the baseline for a layup the Devils closed the gap to 11-10.
Alcoa scored the final six points of the first quarter, capped by a dunk from Jamir Dean that put the Tornadoes in front 17-10.
In the second quarter Parker Quillen hit from deep in the corner and Mills landed a pull-up jumper from the top of the key to cut Alcoa’s lead to 20-17.
That lead stretched back out to 27-17 when Jibriel Koko lobbed an alley-oop dunk to Kirk. The Tornadoes’ biggest lead was 31-19 when Kirk made one free throw.
In the final 1:34 of the first half Kidwell drained three-pointer from the left corner, and sank a midrange jumper from the right side, but Alcoa went to the half leading 33-24.
Mills led Greeneville on Tuesday with 19 points, Kidwell had 12 and Neal 11.
