The Sneads Pirates withstood another stellar shooting exhibition by Altha’s Will Rogers on Tuesday night in Ponce De Leon to take a 70-60 victory over the Wildcats in the first round of the District 3-1A tournament.
Rogers made seven 3-pointers and scored 23 of his game high 30 points in the first half, but the Pirates were able to stay within four points at the break, and dominated the second half to take the win.
With the victory, the Pirates advanced to Friday’s semifinal around where they’ll play the Graceville Tigers for the third time this season at 6 p.m., with the winner advancing to Saturday’s district title game.
“I thought we played real well. It was maybe one of the best games we’ve played all year,” Sneads coach Kelvin Johnson said after the game. “We shot the ball well, and I thought we played extremely well on defense.”
John Locke scored 21 points to lead Sneads, and had the primary defensive assignment of defending Rogers.
Despite the gaudy totals for the sharp-shooting Altha guard, Johnson said that Locke did as well as he could ask.
“(Rogers) his seven threes in the first half and I thought we had a hand in his face on every one of them,” the coach said. “I thought John defended him about as well as you can defend anyone, but the kid still made them. That was the best shooting by a high school guy I’ve ever seen, but I thought we wore him down by the fourth.”
Rogers made just one triple and scored seven points in the second half.
The Pirates took a 50-46 lead by the end of the third quarter and pushed the lead out in the fourth.
Darius Williams scored 17 points for the Pirates, and Aaron Green added 17, including three 3-pointers of his own in the first half.
“Aaron has really been struggling shooting the ball, but those threes in the first half were a big lift for us,” Johnson said.
The Pirates can now turn their attention to the Tigers, who won the first two match-ups in the regular season.
It’s a match-up that Johnson said he foresaw from the start of the year.
“I really figured it would come down to us and them at the beginning of the season,” he said. “I figured Cottondale would be the top team in the district and we could be two and three. It’s the third year in a row we’ve faced them going into the playoffs. We put them out last year and they put us out the year before, so hopefully we can do it to them again this year. We’re real excited about it.”
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