CALEDONIA — New Hope boys basketball coach Drew McBrayer tells his team all the time that basketball is a numbers game.
The Trojans rely heavily on the 3-point shot, so when it’s not falling, McBrayer just reminds his team that that won’t last long.
“When we’re shooting 35 percent from 3 as a team, sooner or later, somebody’s gonna make a couple,” he said.
That was the case during Friday’s regular-season finale at Caledonia, when New Hope couldn’t seem to find its shooting rhythm. The Trojans and the Confederates went into the fourth quarter of the rivalry contest deadlocked at 41-all.
It didn’t take long from there. New Hope got hot, knocking down six 3s in the final quarter — including four on consecutive offensive possessions — to pull away just enough for a 74-68 win.
“It’s fun to watch when they get hot like that,” McBrayer said.
It wasn’t quite so fun for Caledonia coach Gary Griffin, who watched from the bench as New Hope (21-1) pulled ahead for good.
“Once the momentum got going, we couldn’t turn it off,” Griffin said. “We couldn’t turn the faucet off once it started running.”
DJ Hughes hit a 3, RL Mattix hit two and Jaylen Smith hit one to provide 12 critical points for the Trojans when they needed them. After Mattix’s second make, the senior shook his head as he jogged into the backcourt.
“It took too long for me to get going,” Mattix said. “I just needed something to get me going.”
The shot put New Hope ahead 60-51, and Griffin took a timeout. New Hope was well and truly recovered from what Mattix and Smith both called a “sluggish” first half.
Griffin said his team was able to control the tempo, refusing to play at the frenetic pace the Trojans like best, and it frustrated New Hope.
“We struggled in the first half and had to get to where we could get our energy back, and I thought we kind of did that midway through the third quarter and then carried it on into the fourth quarter,” McBrayer said. “We played with a lot of energy late, but we need to be able to start games that way instead of trying to finish them.”
Even so, the Trojans completed a 21-1 regular season and beat the ‘Feds in both matchups this season. Caledonia won both games last year as New Hope finished around .500.
“It felt good competing against New Hope, but I just hate that we lost,” Caledonia senior Jarvis Leigh said.
Despite the rivalry aspect, there’s plenty of familiarity between the two schools. Right after the buzzer, Mattix walked to midcourt to greet Caledonia senior Vonta Martin. The Trojan senior will also team up with Caledonia forward Cooper McCleskey, who had 31 points Thursday, at Northeast Mississippi Community College next season; the two had previously played together in AAU ball.
“They’re gonna compete their tails off when they’re out on the floor, but when it’s all said and done, when it’s over with, these guys are still friends,” McBrayer said.
Caledonia will face South Pontotoc in its district tournament opener at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at Itawamba Community College in Fulton.
New Hope opens its district tournament against West Point on Tuesday in Grenada.
“It’s time to turn the page and go toward district play and the playoffs, but it was a great regular season,” McBrayer said.
New Hope girls 50, Caledonia 37
New Hope senior Juquala Sherrod knows that if the Trojans play the way they did Thursday against Caledonia when their district tournament begins against Grenada on Tuesday, her team will be in trouble.
New Hope still won Thursday’s road game by a comfortable 13-point margin, but the way the Trojans closed out the contest left Sherrod and her team wanting more.
“We should have beaten them by more than what we did,” she said. “We weren’t really putting in the effort.”
Until late in the fourth quarter, New Hope might have had few problems with the way it played. Sherrod had 11 of her 14 points in the first quarter as the Trojans set the tone early, shifting from a strong post game to a 3-point barrage as Caledonia coach Gary Griffin adjusted his defense.
“Once he made the adjustment to stop the inside, it opened up things on the outside, and that’s sort of where the game went after that,” New Hope coach Nick Christy said of Griffin.
Anna Prince hit three 3s for the Trojans; Imoni Harris and Reed McGlothin each knocked down two.
But six of those seven deep balls came in the first three quarters, when New Hope looked like it could cruise to victory.
All of a sudden, though, Caledonia cut the lead to as little as nine points with a few minutes to go in the fourth.
“We just tried our hardest,” Caledonia sophomore Tenizia Lathan said. “This was our last game. We’re just tired of losing, so we just fought.”
Lathan had 20 of her game-high 24 points in the second half to buoy the Feds’ effort, showing the promise that Griffin is happy to see in her.
“Tenizia is our most athletic player and our best player,” Griffin said. “She can do a lot of things on the court. … We’re looking forward to her stepping her game up and, most importantly, the knowledge of how to play the game.”
But despite the best efforts of Lathan and Allison Pennington (eight points), Caledonia couldn’t get over the hump — the hole the ‘Feds dug for themselves early on proved too deep.
“I’m proud of them for coming back and fighting in the second half, but they’ve gotta realize you’ve gotta come out in the first half and play like that,” Griffin said. “On the defensive end, we’ve got to play way tougher than what we played.”
The ‘Feds will face Itawamba Agricultural in the first round of the district tournament at 7 p.m. Tuesday
New Hope faces Grenada in the Chargers’ home gym on Tuesday, and the Trojans are also taking away lessons from their final regular-season game.
“There in the second half, once we were up 20 or more, the effort started to diminish a little bit,” Christy said. “That’s what we were talking about in the locker room: We did enough to win, but the effort and execution weren’t there. They knew that, and it’s not gonna be enough to win on Tuesday.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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