The Claxton Tigers’ basketball teams took a short trip down to Pembroke this past Friday night for some roundball action against the Bryan County Redskins. Both of these schools basketball teams are having trouble putting W’s in the scorebook this season, but this night saw both the girls and boys squads from Claxton go home with a victory. The Lady Tigers picked up their first win of the season with a 46-29 win against the winless Lady Skins. The Claxton boys stole a close one from Bryan County 56-51.
The Lady Tigers were down by two points at halftime, but outscored the Lady Skins in the fourth quarter by 19 points and grabbed their first victory of the year. Leading the scoring for the Lady Tigers was Lacreasha Brewton with 12 points.
The boys of Bryan County could certainly feel their first victory easing their way in this contest as they led by 5 points with less than three minutes remaining in the game, but victory was to be denied. Coach Keith Bazemore said, "We had D.J. McElroy in a game for the first time this season after an injury and he came in and made an immediate impact for us on defense, but once again, our shooting went cold at the end and we couldn’t answer the 13-3 scoring run that Claxton put on us." The hottest hand of the night for Bryan County was Winston Johnson with 16 points, with 12 of the 16 coming from 3-pointers.Helping to add points to the board also was Justin Harrison with eight points.
The Bryan County gym doors were back open on Saturday for some afternoon games as slated on the schedule. Saturdays’ outcomes were no different than the previous night as the 3-AAA squads from South Effingham each went home with a victory. The Mustang girls won 46-30, as the Lady Skins had trouble from the get go. "We got off to a very slow start at the beginning of the game and couldn’t find the basket at the end of the game when we needed it the most," said Coach Mario Mincey. Tara Miles paced the Lady Skins with 10 points, and Brittany Slater pulled down 5 rebounds and added 9 points for the contest.
The Redskin boys team may need to stamp a memo on their head next game that reads "finish the drill," a motto commonly used by Georgia Bulldogs football coach Mark Richt when addressing his football team.
This Redskin fans once again watched their team lose a close one as a two-point Redskin lead vanished just like the night before as they couldn’t find the basket at the end, and the Mustangs from South Effingham took home the victory 53-43.
Bazemore had these closing comments: "We had them by two points close to the end and then they had a scoring run of eight points that we didn’t do anything about as the shooting went cold once again. We just couldn’t finish out the game and it slipped away from us."
Willie Deloach led the scoring for Bryan County with 14 points.