JONESBOROUGH – The South Greene boys couldn’t shake off a slow start on Thursday night and let Crockett get away with an 80-66 win in their final regular season game.
“There are quality wins and non-quality wins. There are quality losses and non-quality losses. We played Dobyns-Bennett Monday night, they’re good. We played Crockett tonight, they’re good. When it comes down to it, I never call a loss quality, but we lost to quality teams. Kind of hit a little skid here and we’ve lost four in-a-row,” South Greene head coach Terry Hoese mentioned. “Don’t feel like we played bad, definitely had some breakdowns and let them have a couple wide-open looks and run-out layups. But outside of that, I felt like we played well.”
After reaching a 19-5 record after Friday night’s win over Chuckey-Doak, the Rebels ended the regular season on a four-game skid. Losses to Cocke County, Dobyns-Bennett, North Greene, and Crockett weakened their record to 19-9 heading into next week’s District 1-2A Tournament.
Two bad quarters is all it took to seal the Rebels fate. Losing the first quarter by seven and the third quarter by six resulted in the fourteen-point loss.
The Rebels received another impressive 30-point, double-double performance from Chandler Gamble, but his game highs of 31 points and 17 rebounds still didn’t seem like enough.
Crockett only made two three-point shots in the first half, but came alive to hit seven in the second half to dig their hole deeper. South Greene’s defensive lapses would sting the most and cause them to never reach back within striking distance after the first quarter.
Bradley Gouge started the game with a free-throw line jumper before Chandler Gamble and Trey Gentry scored four to give South Greene the early lead. After Gouge stepped behind the three-point line and made a triple, South Greene never led again. Stephen Hensley and Caleb Eaves scored back-to-back layups to complete a 7-0 run.
The rest of South Greene’s scoring in the first quarter came from Gamble. He scored ten of South Greene’s twelve in the opening frame, but it always seemed like he was playing catch up. He nailed a three to cut it to 11-9 before Reagan Cash and Hensley strung together six-straight to strengthen Crockett’s lead. They led 19-12 after one.
In the second Noah Wright scored the opening three points for South Greene, but they were centered around five-straight from Crockett. Down 29-16, Gamble scored six-straight to end the half and pulled South Greene to within seven at the break. It was 30-23 when each team entered the locker rooms.
The second half was full of scoring with both team’s combining for 93 points. The third quarter went in Crockett’s favor again by a margin of six points to extend their lead to thirteen.
The three-pointers started falling when Stephen Hensley drained one as the first shot in the second half. He led Crockett with 24 points and made five second-half three-pointers. The largest run by either team in the third happened to be a small five-point run by Crockett, but Hensley’s trio of threes outgunned South Greene’s two-point shots.
South Greene trailed 54-41 going into the fourth and made instant noise to begin the final quarter. Chandler Gamble swished a three and Charlie Lane scored four-straight to rattle off a 7-0 run to cut it back to six. Lane clutched up and scored eight-straight for South Greene. Unfortunately for them, Hensley still hadn’t cooled off from the third quarter and made two more to counter Lane’s clutch run.
Cayden Fillers landed a put-back layup, but that’s when Crockett scored seven-straight that was capped off by a three-pointer from Cam Gouge that received the kindest bounce off the front iron to go in. The Rebels creeped back into it with a 7-2 run and made it a semi-manageable 70-61 deficit. Reagan Cash laid the ball in over the rim before Gavin Dyer cashed his second-straight three to cut it to 72-64.
The dagger that summed up South Greene’s night was a three-pointer from Brody McGuire. A shot from Crockett bounced off the top of the backboard but was never called dead and the offensive rebound led to the three from McGuire.
A garbage-time layup with six seconds left made the final score 80-66 from Jonesborough with Crockett beating South Greene.
Chandler Gamble led every player with 31 points and 17 rebounds. Charlie Lane scored 12, all in the second half.
Stephen Hensley led the Pioneers with 24 points. Bradley Gouge added 19 and Reagan Cash delivered 13.
The Rebels aren’t scheduled to play for another week until next Friday’s semifinal game against the winner on Tuesday night’s Johnson County/Happy Valley game.
Hoese said, “We’ve got a week to get ready. We’ll get them off their feet and let them rest a little bit for the weekend and try to get back in the gym Monday and fix some stuff.”
“We’ll have either Johnson County or Happy Valley next Friday night. We’ll find that out Tuesday night. The focus now is to try and win a tournament.”
GIRLS
DAVID CROCKETT 83, SOUTH GREENE 32
Riddled with injuries and down multiple starters, South Greene didn’t match up well with David Crockett High School and lost 83-32 on Thursday night.
Walking into the gym Coach Gregg knew Thursday night’s contest would be one tall task. Crockett came into the night ranked ninth in the state in Class 3A’s rankings. South Greene came into the game on a five-game losing skid and things seemed bleak. The Lady Rebels never found a rhythm and suffered a few tough blows very early on that they never recovered from.
“We knew we were playing a tough opponent and we were undermanned and down to eight players. Truly, a lot of those aren’t in our true rotation. It was good for the bottom end to play and get some court experience. But it’s what it is.,” Lady Rebels head coach Stephen Gregg stated.
From the opening tip off it wasn’t pretty. Aaliyah Story won the tip and two quick passes later Brylee Tullock scored on a layup only three seconds in. By the end of the first minute Crockett led 9-0 and South Greene still hadn’t crossed half court.
Reagan Arrowood hit a corner three next to Crockett’s bench that served as the Lady Rebels only field goal of the quarter. The Lady Pioneers scored 28-straight to end the frame and led 39-3 after one.
“You played a good team on the road and we were undermanned and that first quarter sums it all up,” Gregg stated.
Brylee Tullock led all scorers with 24 points and had 18 of those in the first quarter alone. Her and Story combined for 28 in the first period.
South Greene generated a small run of five-straight in the second with Paisley Brobeck’s elbow jumper and another triple from Arrowood. Brobeck and Arrowood scored in spurts and combined for 14 of their 16 points at the half. Crockett managed to hit three three-pointers and outscored them 15-13 in the quarter and extended their lead to 54-16 at halftime.
Starting the second half trailing 38 points the lead only seemed to grow every few minutes. They were outscored 17-11 in the third and trailed 71-27 entering the fourth.
The continuous clock didn’t seem continuous as Crockett attempted to have everybody score in which they successfully succeeded. They added 12 more in the corner to make it a 51-point margin at the final buzzer.
South Greene ended up losing 83-32. Reagan Arrowood led them in scoring with 11 points.
Crockett had all ten players score and were led by three double-digit scorers of Brylee Tullock with 24, Laney Britton with 16, and Aaliyah Story with 13.
South Greene slips to 9-19 heading into next week’s District 1-2A Tournament. They begin as the No. 4 seed on Monday with No. 5 Johnson County at 6:30 at Unicoi County High School.
