Bulldogs, Tigers split games

The Marianna Bulldogs capped their summer session by splitting a pair of games Thursday at Marianna High School.

The Bulldogs fell to Chipley 45-30, before rebounding to take a 48-39 win over Malone.

Malone also split its two games in its final day playing in Marianna, beating Graceville 68-26 in the final game of the night.

Graceville also lost to Chipley 59-39 earlier in the day.

Marianna led Chipley by three at halftime, but couldn’t hold off the Tigers’ charge in the second half.

“I think Chipley played probably harder than we did,” Bulldogs coach Travis Blanton said. “Our kids might have felt like they were going to walk out there and
Chipley would lay down, but Chipley had another thing on their mind.”

Chipley regained the lead early in the second half, then extended its advantage to six with eight minutes to play.

The Bulldogs were not able to make up any more ground.

“We missed some real easy baskets, but Chipley made some big shots and several 3-pointers,” Blanton said. “We would get the lead cut to five or six, then they’d make a three and push it right back to eight or nine.

“We just never really could get back in the game. We probably took some ill-advised shots and panicked early. I think the kids lost their composure a little bit and got a little frustrated with some missed shots. But for the most part, Chipley just outplayed us.”

It was a different story in the second game of the day for the Bulldogs. Blanton said the team took motivation from the Chipley loss into its meeting with Malone.

“I think the Chipley game got out kids’ attention and they responded,” the coach said. “I told them they have to go back out there with an attitude. They were mad and turned all that negative emotion after the first game to a positive for the second game.”

The Bulldogs came out fast and went ahead by eight at the half.

“I thought we played a lot better,” Blanton said. “Defensively, we did a much better job of keeping them in front of us, and some of the shots we missed in the first game started to fall in the second game.”
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Earlier in the day, the Marianna and Cottondale junior varsity teams squared off in a game that featured three 20-minutes quarters with running clocks.

The game was tied after each of the first three periods, before being resolved in overtime with a 61-57 Marianna win.

“It was very entertaining,” Blanton said of the game. “I think that now with Cottondale against Marianna being such a big deal, you had people coming in at halftime for a JV game, which was nice.”

Marianna’s junior varsity was coached Thursday by Marianna girls coach Chucky Brown, while Steve Harp led the JV Hornets, in a game that outshined the varsity games that followed in drama and competitiveness.

“Cottondale’s JV is real good. They can score, they can all shoot it and they’re well-coached,” Blanton said. “Coach Harp does a great job with them. I like their
young kids. They’ve got some good possibilities in the future.

“We wanted to end the summer with the JV kids getting a chance to play, and coach Brown stepped in and did a good job of keeping the kids fresh. They all got to play. It was a great end to the summer.”
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There will be one more day of summer play at Marianna, with Sneads, Cottondale, Port St. Joe and Bay all scheduled to play on Tuesday. The first game starts at 4 p.m. and the last at 7 p.m.