After the Columbus High School boys basketball team lost to New Hope on Jan. 17, Columbus coach Phillip Morris lamented an imbalanced scoring effort from the Falcons. Key contributors went scoreless or were held to just a few points in the 65-55 road loss.
“The guys that we’re used to scoring, those guys have to step up,” Morris said after the defeat. “They don’t have to have a 20-point game or anything like that, but they’ve gotta step up.”
By those standards, consider Friday’s 61-49 home win over Grenada a step in the right direction for the Falcons.
Columbus received far more contributions from its role players on Friday than it did against the Trojans, when junior Blake Burnett was left to carry the load with 31 points. Burnett still led the Falcons with 13 on Friday against the Chargers, but sophomore Tre Dismuke and junior Eric Caldwell each contributed 11 points, senior Gabe Williams had 10, and sophomore Willie Young had eight.
“A lot of guys stepped up and played well for us,” Morris said. “I’m proud of our guys. Everybody gave us good minutes.”
Critical to the Falcons’ success Friday was their stellar passing; Columbus limited turnovers, made the extra pass and found open shooters outside or hit cutters to the basket in stride. That’s something Morris hasn’t seen all too often this season.
“We have a tendency of just making little passes, soft passes, and that type of thing,” Morris said. “We’ve been working on it in practice: just making hard, crisp passes and doing drills.”
The Falcons’ willingness to share the ball helped them pull away in the second quarter after the first period ended in a 12-12 tie. Williams tied the game again at 14-14 with a nifty Eurostep move then slammed home a dunk to put the Falcons up 20-14.
Columbus took a 29-20 lead into halftime and pushed the advantage as high as 16 points on a steal and layup by Dismuke, but Morris wasn’t pleased with how the Falcons finished out the contest.
While Columbus had a 12-point advantage at the end of the third quarter and still won by 12 points, the Falcons’ fourth quarter was full of missed layups, poor foul shooting, inconsistent rebounding and lackadaisical defense.
“Personally, I think we could have rebounded the ball better,” Dismuke said. “We didn’t finish a lot of plays.”
To Morris, that troublesome stretch of play is a sign the Falcons aren’t quite on track with where they need to be.
“We’re playing like it’s mid-November, early December,” he said. “We should be more mature in this point in time, knowing what to do in certain situations at certain times. We’ll take it, but we’re still not mature enough.”
Columbus will get another chance to prove its maturity Tuesday when it hosts West Point.
Columbus girls 61, Grenada 26
Six seconds was all it took for DJ Jackson and the Columbus girls to get on the right track Friday against Grenada.
The Falcons controlled the opening tip, promptly advanced the ball into the frontcourt and set up the junior point guard for an open 3, which rattled through the hoop as the scoreboard clock showed 7:54 remaining in the first quarter.
“We knew that if we got her some open looks that we were gonna be fine,” Columbus coach Yvonne Hairston said. “When she gets off to a good start, she starts feeling it, and then she just starts shooting that thing.”
In a flash, the Falcons had a lead, and they never gave it up. Columbus (15-3, 4-0 district) coasted to a 61-26 win over Grenada on Friday, clinching the No. 1 seed in district play.
“We’re handling business like we’re supposed to,” senior Aniya Saddler said. “We’re not trying to do too much.”
Saddler, who typically leads the Falcons in scoring, didn’t have to do all that much herself Friday, stepping back a bit to let Jackson shoulder the load. Jackson scored 12 points in the first quarter alone and finished with 21 points to Saddler’s 16, leading all scorers.
“That’s a wonderful thing to be able to go to her like that,” Hairston said. “At the beginning of the season, we weren’t able to do that. Now she’s able to step up and play big.”
With a weeklong layoff since last Friday’s blowout win at New Hope, the Falcons scuffled a little bit in the second quarter, though they still outscored the Chargers 12-9 in the period.
“We’ve been sitting and waiting a while,” Hairston said. “We didn’t have that repetition, and that hurt us a little bit.”
But the Falcons got sufficient scoring from Jackson and Saddler and locked in on defense yet again. Columbus held New Hope to just 17 points last Friday and held Grenada to 27 in a 41-point win in the two schools’ first matchup.
“I felt like we pushed the ball well,” Jackson said. “I feel like we were mentally prepared on defense.”
Columbus has just two district games to go, hosting West Point on Tuesday and New Hope next Friday, and the Falcons are peaking at the right time.
“We’re playing well this time of the year, and this is when we’re supposed to,” Hairston said. “Earlier, we didn’t, but this time of the year, we’re playing well. We want to be where we are right now.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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