Heritage Academy boys basketball coach Russ Whiteside knew it wouldn’t come easy.
Visiting Oak Hill Academy, trailing by two points, had just called timeout in the frontcourt with two seconds left in Monday’s game. That set up an inbounds play for the tie or the win for the Raiders, leaving Whiteside’s team in an unfamiliar and perilous position in just its second game of the season.
“Early in the year a lot of times in situations like that, you don’t do very well,” he said.
But the Raiders inbounded the ball well behind the 3-point line, and Daniel Harrington’s contested heave was wide left of the backboard. Game over. Test passed.
“They did a really good job,” Whiteside said.
The Patriots survived with a 35-33 win over the Raiders (2-1), evening their record at 1-1 and denying Oak Hill Academy of a chance for a road win over the defending state champions.
“We played hard at times, but we just didn’t play very well,” Oak Hill coach Andrew Howell said. “That’s the way it goes. It’s early. You’ve just gotta learn from it and move on.”
But for Whiteside, Heritage Academy’s energy throughout Monday’s game was reason enough to be excited.
“I can’t say enough about the effort that we played with,” he said. “I thought we defended really hard, and we won the 50-50 balls, the loose balls on the floor — I thought we got after those and got those. We’ve got to sharpen up offensively and find some consistency there, but from an effort standpoint, I’m really proud of how hard they played.”
Even on an evening where they struggled to score, the Patriots were still able to play well enough to win.
“Defensively, we played hard,” senior Steele Altmyer said. “That’s what kept us in the game.”
Altmyer had an off night offensively, including three rare missed free throws in the final minute that could have iced the game.
“He’s a great free-throw shooter,” Whiteside said of Altmyer. “He shoots it really good. He’s a good shooter, and maybe tonight wasn’t his best shooting night, but he’ll come around.”
Senior Adam Koussih kept the Pats afloat, but it was sophomore Drew Huskison who stepped up on offense late in a back-and-forth fourth quarter. Huskison had a nifty scoop layup to pull Heritage Academy ahead at 31-29, and Altmyer got an open layup to stretch it to 33-29.
But the Raiders responded late, eventually getting a chance to tie with 10 seconds left after Altmyer missed the front end of a one-and-one.
Howell called timeout once the ball was in the frontcourt, aiming for a game-winning 3-ball. But the play he drew up simply broke down.
“They just kind of stopped,” he said. “It’s early. It’s early not only for coaches but for players learning how to run draws in game situations.”
Howell knows beating the Patriots would have been a big moment for his team, but he knows it’s just the Raiders’ third game of the season. All is not lost.
“I like where we’re headed,” he said, “and this isn’t it for us.”
Heritage Academy girls 53, Oak Hill Academy 38
With a few seconds to go in Monday’s game against, Heritage Academy senior Sydney Adair stole the ball and raced down the court with no one in front of her.
Adair headed straight for the basket, bent on a layup. Then she picked up the message from coach Moe Reed.
“Coach Moe was like, ‘Clock!’ ‘Clock!’, so I just kept running,” Adair said.
Instead of scoring, she dribbled away the final seconds with her back toward the basket, disappointing the home crowd but preserving a 53-38 Heritage Academy victory, the Patriots’ second of the season. And after last Tuesday’s blowout loss at Hartfield Academy, it was a win Heritage Academy (2-3) very much needed ahead of Thursday’s road matchup with powerhouse Jackson Academy.
“I think it boosted our self-esteem,” senior Bailey Harris said.
The Pats’ scoring output was higher than usual — Adair was pleased with putting up more than 50 points, saying it instilled confidence in the team — but their defense was the real story.
“There’s some things that we need to clean up, but overall I was really pleased with our team defense,” Reed said.
Adair poked the ball away multiple times on the outside, the Pats’ interior defense held up, and Heritage Academy kept the Raiders to just 14 points in the first half and took an 11-point halftime lead.
“At the beginning, I thought we worked really good together,” Harris said.
But about midway through the second quarter, she could feel her team’s dominant defense starting to slip slightly.
“We let them get easy shots, and that put our standards down and knocked us down a little bit,” she said.
Oak Hill got within single digits at 29-20 with 4 minutes, 39 seconds to go in the third quarter, but Harris responded in a big way.
She hit a 3-pointer from the right wing, and the Heritage Academy cheerleaders began a chant of “BAI-ley HAR-ris!”
“That’s one of my favorite chants,” Adair said.
On the Pats’ next possession, after an Oak Hill layup, Harris tried the same shot. Same result. Same chant.
“She’s an explosive scorer at any time,” Reed said of Harris, who finished with 18 points and made four 3s. “I told her if her outside shot wasn’t falling to look to go to the goal, but I think she did a really good job of mixing both in and keeping the defense off balance.”
Playing at home, Harris said, she’s more comfortable, more willing to risk it.
“When I know I’ve made a few shots, I take chances and pull up,” she said. “That’s what’s fun. I like to do that.”
Harris knows she won’t have the same friendly environment for Thursday’s game in Jackson, and she hopes her team will establish its own pace and refuse to let the Raiders dictate the game.
“JA’s gonna be a good test of how we can work together as a team and not necessarily get down on each other,” she said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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