CALEDONIA — Consistency was an elusive ingredient Thursday night.
For large stretches of his team’s game against New Hope High School, Caledonia High boys basketball coach Josh Scott saw a team that shared the basketball, took good shots, and did a lot of things it takes to win games.
Take away the final four minutes of the second quarter and the Confederates might have accomplished that goal.
New Hope used an 11-2 run in that stretch to turn a seven-point deficit into a halftime lead and then pulled away for a 68-63 victory.
Jason Tate had a game-high 23 points for New Hope (16-9), while Lawrence Brown had 18 and Demetri Clark had 12 points.
In the girls game, D.J. Sanders had a game-high 16 points and Moesha Calmes had 13 to lead New Hope to a 48-31 victory.
New Hope coach Drew McBrayer said his team is more talented offensively than some of the school’s recent teams he has coached. The trick, though, is to get this season’s team to play defense to the level of past squads That is something that has come and gone, but it showed its spirit at a key juncture to provide a spark.
“When they can get to that point, when they have to figure out they have to dig in and get stops when it matters, the they’re tough,” McBrayer said. “At times, they do it. We got three steals (in the second quarter) and laid it up three times. With our size, we have to get those easy baskets.”
A free throw by Tyre Mallard gave Caledonia (12-9) a 25-18 lead with 4 minutes, 1 second to play in the first half. But New Hope rallied thanks to its defense. Jock Pilgrim hit a 3-pointer, and Clark had a steal and a layup. Caledonia committed consecutive turnovers after New Hope increased its pressure on the ball. The push in tempo resulted in a layup by Pilgrim and another by Brown off a pass from Tate. Tate then capped the run with two free throws with 54.8 seconds to play in the quarter to give New Hope a 29-25 lead.
Ben Marchbanks’ layup with 44.7 seconds accounted for the 29-27 halftime score.
McBrayer said his team has improved its defense, and that the players understand the importance of it because it has been an on-going discussion all season. He said the closest New Hope has come to delivering 32 minutes of solid defense was in the two games against district rival Oxford. New Hope likely will need a similar effort Tuesday to get past West Point in the third meeting of the season if it wants to put itself in position to earn a possible third matchup against Oxford for the district crown.
“If they commit to it all night long, they can be a good basketball team,” McBrayer said. “That will get your butt whupped in the playoffs, when you take that lackadaisical effort in the playoffs and you get down and you can’t fight back. You have to start with that intensity. We’re not consistent enough, and not as consistent as I want us to be on the defensive end.”
The teams were tied at 42 before New Hope pushed its lead to 49-42 on a 3-pointer by Pilgrim (nine points) with 7:33 to play. The Trojans extended the lead to as many as eight with a little more than a minute to play. They hit 5 of 8 free throws in the final 33.3 seconds to seal the deal.
Caleb Brown led Caledonia with 13 points. Cole Carter, Eric Douglas, and Tyler Lowe each had 12 points, while Marchbanks had 10. Scott said the Confederates have bought into the team concept all season and have shared the basketball, but he said the consistency they will need to advance in the district tournament wasn’t there long enough Thursday night.
“We built the lead and then we did the how-not-to section (in the second quarter) when we gave it all back in three trips,” Scott said. “We have got to develop consistency. We have a week to do it. We played a decent game, but you have got to eliminate three trips down the floor, and we couldn’t do it tonight.”
Scott said his team has had good senior leadership from Will Breen, Carter, Shaquille Dixon, Douglas, Lowe, and Mallard, but he said the team has had a tendency to “take plays off,” which stunts any momentum it has and gives an opponent to get back into the game.
In the girls game, New Hope (20-5) struggled to find its rhythm. A turnover and a layup by Symone Dickerson cut New Hope’s lead to 21-14 with 4:01 left in the third quarter. That’s when New Hope regrouped and used a 10-3 run to close the quarter to double its lead. Calmes hit back-to-back 3-pointers to push the margin to as many as 21 in the final quarter.
“It was definitely not our best performance tonight,” New Hope coach Laura Lee Holman said. “I am glad we found a way to win.”
Holman said her team was “as dead as it could be,” especially on offense. The Lady Trojans couldn’t use their defense to trigger their offense, and played a lot like they did two weeks ago in a loss at West Point, according to Holman.
“It is the time of the year when you have to be getting better every day and not having games like this, but they are young and I hope they have learned their lessons,” Holman said. “Offensively, we were not in attack mode. We were almost lazy, which is my way to describe it.”
Sarah Guess paced Caledonia with 15 points.
New Hope will play host to West Oktibbeha at 6 tonight, while Caledonia will play host to Carthage at the same time.
Both teams will begin play in their district tournaments Tuesday. The New Hope girls and boys will play West Point at 4 and at 8:30 p.m. in Oxford, while the Caledonia girls will play at 6 p.m. at Noxubee County and the boys will play Koscisuko at 7:30 p.m.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.