Bob Jones and James Clemens seasons end in area tournament
HARVEST- The James Clemens girls basketball season ended with a thud Tuesday night in the Class 7A, Area 8 tournament as the Jets played without their top player Destinee McGhee and lost to Buckhorn 59-38.
The team reached heights this year the program has not seen before. The Jets entered postseason ranked seventh with 19 wins but without McGhee’s scoring and rebounding Buckhorn dominated the boards and seemed to get every loose ball. The Jets could not hit their shots and on defense could not stop Buckhorn’s Sarah Suttle who torched the Jets for 31 points, most of them in the second half.
The Jets trailed by nine at the half. Bria Junearick hit a three for James Clemens to make it 41-28 but from there Suttle scored 5 straight points and Buckhorn went on an 11-0 run to put the game away.
Earlier in the evening Sparkman defeated Bob Jones 65-40 to end the Patriots season.
Sparkman used their pressing defense and ball handling to jump out to a big 15 point lead in the first quarter.
Deyanna Dodd had 14, Derienne Black 16, and Deserea Walker 11.
Sparkman Coach Patrick Delay will face Buckhorn Saturday at 5:30 in the area final for seeding. After that both teams will move on to Wallace State Hanceville in the NW Regional where one or both of them will face the state’s top team Hoover.
“One thing we have to get better at is consistently playing every possession,” Delay said. “We will play well for five minutes and then we don’t play well so we can’t give away possessions. The competition will get tougher now. Hoover is ranked in the top 25 in the nation. We got our work cut out for us Saturday against Buckhorn. We want that first seed. We played Hoover on MLK Day and tried to press, tried zone, so we’ve seen them and they are really good. Both times we played Buckhorn it has been tight. It will be a big challenge.”
Sparkman recognized seniors Tuesday night because Huntsville cancelled last week on Sparkman’s scheduled senior night. Delay has three seniors; Derienne Black, Francesca Dempsey, and Jabrea White.
“Derienne starts for us but they all three play a lot of minutes,” Delay said
