CLASS 5A CENTRAL REGIONAL FINAL: Clock strikes 12 on Marbury's run
Marbury’S Jamar Brown drives past Erick O'Neal of Sylacauga in the Class 5A boys Central Regional final at Alabama State on Wednesday. (Tim Gayle)
By TIM GAYLE
The clock struck midnight on Marbury’s Cinderella season as the Sylacauga Aggies outran, outrebounded and outshot the Bulldogs on the way to an easy 70-40 win in the 5A Central Regional finals at Alabama State’s Dunn-Oliver Acadome on Tuesday afternoon.
The Bulldogs were close for a quarter, but a 16-9 run by the Aggies in the second quarter proved decisive as Marbury had neither the rebounding advantage or the defense to stop Sylacauga from extending the lead.
Sylacauga (29-2) will face Guntersville (27-5) in the 5A semifinals at Birmingham’s Legacy Arena on March 4 at 4:30 p.m.
Marbury (22-11) was making only its second trip ever to the regionals and its first trip to the regional finals. The moment, Marbury coach William Turner admitted, might have been a little too big for the inexperienced players to handle.
“We saw a little bit of the fact that they’re 10th and 11th graders, not 11th and 12th graders,” he said. “The maturity level that I’m seeing when we came back in here (to the locker room after the game) is the recognition of that fact, that they recognized, hey, there’s stuff we’re going to have to immediately do, seeing what the competition is at this level.
“They (the Aggies) were able to get some second-chance points where we got hardly any. We really struggled to get any extra possessions on offense. It was one shot and done.
“And that was as bad as we’ve shot all year. I was surprised because I felt like we shot the lights out (in the regional semifinals). We watched some (earlier) games (in the regional finals on Tuesday morning) and started seeing and recognizing these really, really low-scoring games and knew that could potentially happen.”
But while the season ended on a sour note, the Cinderella Bulldogs snapped a five-game losing streak in sub-regional games to make their second-ever appearance in a regional, then defeated Central-Clay County to earn the program’s first berth in a regional final.
“One game does not make up the big picture of what this season is,” Turner said. “If we were told we would make it to the Elite Eight at the start of the season, we would have been stoked, absolutely happy about that. Now that we’re here, we realize we could have done even more. We’re disappointed, obviously, but you can’t lose the perspective of what you’ve accomplished.”
CJ Franklin, the regional’s most valuable player, had 10 points, seven assists and nine rebounds for the Aggies. Corbyn Patterson added 16 points, followed by Tristan Whetstone with 13.
Noah Trotter led the Bulldogs with 18 points.
Joining Franklin on the all-tournament team were Trotter and Jalen Hall of Marbury, along with Elmore County’s Asher Justice and Sylacauga’s Erick O’Neal and Patterson.