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Bryan County leave it late to win 55-41 against Emanuel County Institute
basketball

When Bryan County coach Jason Napier was asked after his team beat Emanuel County Institute, 55-41, last Friday night if it felt like a 14-point win, he paused for a second and then chuckled.

 

“That was the No. 1 game note I put up on the board: fall in love with little things, a great pass, a nice layup,” Napier said. “Highlight plays have to happen organically, they have to happen within the flow of the game.

 

“The minute you start to try and force something it usually doesn’t end up well. We left 8-12 points at the rim trying to be extra. So, yes a 14-point win should have been 25 or 30.”

 

Playing a team it had beaten on the road earlier by 15 points the Redskins (14-6, 7-5), as they had in their previous game with Screven County, through some careless ball handling and questionable decisions let a bad Bulldogs (2-17, 1-13 club hang around for three quarters.

 

It wasn’t until the first three minutes of the fourth quarter that Bryan County could break away the Bulldogs. Holding a 36-31 lead after three quarters the Redskins scored the first 11 points of the fourth for a 47-31 lead with 5:02 to play.

 

The win moved Bryan County into third-place in the Region 3A-DII race going into the final week of the regular season. The Redskins played Jenkins County (10-11, 7-7) at home on Tuesday with a home game against Metter (8-11, 3-10) on Wednesday.

 

From there Bryan County goes to Claxton (5-15, 2-11) for a Friday night matchup and then at 2:30 p.m. Saturday it goes to Savannah High (17-4, 12-1). The Blue Jackets played McIntosh County Academy (19-3, 13-0) on Tuesday night.

 

The Redskins are jockeying for a third-place finish at best and a more favorable seeding for next week’s region tournament which will get underway Tuesday night at Jenkins County.

 

It would be easy to project three wins in those closing four games but then that depends on which Redskins team shows up.

 

“It’s been a roller coaster ride,” said Napier, who is in his first year at Bryan County. “That’s one of the things about having a group of seniors. They have so much of one way of playing under their belt so it’s hard to change. They’re used to doing it a certain way. When we decide to turn it on and play well, anticipate and play quickly and stay within the structure we’re great.

 

“We get bored real easy but they’ve gotten better,” Napier said. “Against Screven we had a 25-point lead with about four minutes to go in the third quarter and they came back to tie it.

 

“That’s a negative but the positive, I think, is the old team might have folded a little bit once a team gets on a run like that, they get momentum. We regrouped and pulled away by six or eight (64-59 win). It shows we’re capable of stopping the momentum and getting it back on our side. We kind of did that tonight (against ECI).”

 

Bryan County led the Bulldogs 21-6 after the first quarter but then went flat in the second quarter as it scored only six points for a 27-20 halftime lead. Both teams scored 11 points each in the third quarter but the Redskins turned it on to start the final eight minutes and coasted home from there.

 

Elijah Mincey and Darius Edwards scored 13 points each and Jadon Odum added eight to lead the way. ECI did cut the lead to eight, 47-39, but Bryan County put on an 8-0 run, four by Edwards, to erase any lingering doubts.


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