Sparkman girl’s clinch area title with win over Buckhorn
Sparkman's Toni Brewer (54) and Maiya Rumph (24) against Buckhorn
With a convincing 62-43 win over area opponent Buckhorn Friday night, Sparkman took the first step toward what they expect to be a long post season run in the upcoming playoffs with the final step being the Final Four Championship game in Birmingham.
It was also fitting that the win came on the night the school honored former coach June Seals and members of Sparkman’s state championship girl’s basketball teams of 01-02 and 02-03.
With the win, Sparkman runs their area record to 5-0 and clinches the top spot and home court in the area tournament which is still four weeks away.
“It will be nice to play here on our home floor and host and shoot at our own goals,” said Sparkman coach Patrick Delay.
Against Buckhorn, Sparkman did a lot of shooting at their goals and scoring. The Senators broke open a close game with a 10-point run near the end of the half to go up 32-15 at halftime.
Sparkman had their biggest lead of the game in the third quarter at 41-17. Buckhorn is playing without Janelle Odionou, a 6-foot-2 post player who moved after the first semester. The lead reached 52-30 early in the fourth quarter and stayed around 20 until the end of the game.
Alexis Jennings sparked the attack for Sparkman running the court and scoring on fast break opportunities. She scored 26 points, 3 over her season average of 23 per game.
On defense she imposed her will on smaller Buckhorn players with 5 blocked shots. She also pulled down eight rebounds.
She had plenty of help down low as Toni Brewer pulled 10 rebounds. Maiya Rumph had eight points.
Jennings said that she is being recruited by mostly SEC schools right now.Alabama, Kentucky, and Florida are recruiting her the hardest but she is only a junior so she is about a year away from committing.
For now she is focused only on getting her team to Birmingham and the Final Four.
“We were a very young team last year but we have got a chance to shine this year and we are using all our abilities to do that,”Jennings said.
Delay said this year’s team is like night and day different from last year’s team that lost to Huntsville in the first round of the area tournament.
“This team has matured a lot and that loss has served as a lot of motivation to win the area and win that first game and advance.”
Delay will have to refocus his players to get through the eight remaining games in the regular season.
“It is going to be a challenge for us because we didn’t look too sharp at times tonight. After we got that big lead we just sat on it and turned the ball over too much, just lack of focus. Even though we clinched the area, we got a lot of games coming up.”
“We are going to have to work on our ball handling and our decisions with the basketball,” Delay added.
