It was only a three-minute stretch out of 32 but Coach Bill Henderson got a glimpse of the potential of his struggling Richmond Hill basketball team. And he liked what he saw.

An unranked but highly talented Camden County team rolled to a 60-38 Region 1-7A win over the Wildcats Tuesday night at Wildcats Arena but the ever-optimistic Henderson saw a glimmer of hope for his team as it heads down the stretch of regular season play.

The blue clad Wildcats (18-5, 6-0) opened the game by jumping out to a 12-0 lead but rather than rolling over, the homesteading Wildcats (4-19, 2-5) showed some mettle as they rallied to tie it a 15-15 only to let the game get away from them.

The win enabled Camden to maintain its one-game region lead over Valdosta (18-5, 5-1) with the two teams scheduled to play one another Saturday night at Camden. Lowndes County (7-11, 2-3) holds down third followed by Richmond Hill and Colquitt County (3-15, 0-6).

Richmond Hill closes out region play Friday night at Lowndes holding out hope that somehow it could finish third. That would require beating the Vikings, who then in turn would have to also lose to Colquitt and Camden.

That scenario is unlikely to occur which means the Wildcats will host Colquitt in the fourth-fifth place playing game with the winner earning a berth in the Class 7A state playoffs.

In their final regular season home game—following the game at Lowndes the Wildcats will be at Brunswick next Tuesday—Henderson saw enough against Camden to give him a glimmer of hope in what has been a difficult season.

“I’m proud of the way our group responded,” Henderson said. “Being down like that to start against a really good team, it would have been easy to say it’s not our night.

“They persevered, they handled adversity. Unfortunately, we came up short.”

Richmond Hill did not get on the board until 4:10 left in the first quarter when Joshua Scott broke the ice on the Wildcats’ seventh possession of the game which at that point had seen them miss four shots and commit four turnovers.

The deficit was 14-3 when Scott hit a pair of free throws with 43 seconds to play in the first to start a 12-1 run that gave suffering Wildcats fans a glimmer of hope.

Bryce Hendricks got his only basket of the night when he put back a missed shot as the quarter ended and Derrick Lum scored on a followup of a miss to open the second quarter. After Camden’s Elyiss Williams made a free throw Braylon Hayes made a free throw, Liam Bolton drilled a 3-pointer and Hayes tied it with 5:30 on the clock.

That proved to be Richmond Hill’s final gasp as Camden began to assert itself on the offensive boards as it started a 23-4 run that carried into the third quarter to put the game on ice.

Hayes was a bright spot for the Wildcats as he scored 17 points with four 3-pointers and Scott added 10.

“They are an athletic bunch and that requires a lot of mental toughness on every single shot,” Henderson said of Camden. “You have to make sure you find your man, make sure you’re boxing out.

“Camden does a really good job. They play hard and they’re constantly applying pressure whether it’s on defense, pressure on the offensive glass so you’ve got to be really tough.”

In the likelihood they finish fourth in the five-team region, the Wildcats’ next challenge will be to beat Colquitt a third time and should that meeting take place Henderson believes his team will be ready.

“The growth we’ve shown over the course of the year is really encouraging,” Henderson said. “Growth as basketball players but also growth in terms of character, in terms of accountability, in terms of discipline. They’ve gotten better in all these areas and you’re starting to see it in our play.”