CLASS 3A AREA 6: MA wins wild one in area championship

MA’s Jamal Cooper loses the handle of the ball during the Eagles’ win over Catholic. (Tim Gayle)

By TIM GAYLE

Friday’s 3A Area 6 championship game had a little bit of everything.

The officiating allowed both teams to turn the game into a physical free-for-all that spread to bad reactions in the stands among the fans. A scorebook dispute led to the best player on the floor being benched for the final three minutes and a last-minute flurry of scoring almost pulled out a miraculous victory.

In the end, it was Montgomery Academy who weathered the obstacles in a strange night for basketball, holding off Catholic 43-41 for the area tournament title in the Catholic gym.

“It was crazy with all the fans,” tournament most valuable player Nigel Walker said, “but all we have to worry about is one thing and that’s on the court. You can’t worry about all the stuff going on around you. That’s what our coach wanted us to not do. So he said let him coach, let us play. So he had to worry about the referees and we had to just get the job done.”

Catholic (13-10), which reached the area tournament finals for the sixth consecutive year, will travel to a sub-regional game for the first time in three years, playing at Dadeville on Tuesday at 6 p.m. 

Montgomery Academy (11-10), climbing above .500 for the first time this season, plays host Reeltown in a sub-regional game on Tuesday at 6 p.m.

It didn’t look that way early. The Eagles made just two of their first 11 shots in the first quarter and trailed 14-4. It wasn’t much better at the half as they continued to struggle with making simple shots around the basket. 

“It was a very physical game, especially in the first half,” MA coach Jeremy Arant said. “They (officials) let us play for a while in the first half, didn’t call much early. That kind of led to the game being the type of game it was. Any time you’ve got two teams with good athletes that are physical, especially defensively, and they allow you to play like that, it’s going to kind of junk the game up a little bit. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

Catholic, which opened the game with an intense, physical defense didn’t maintain the same level of intensity as the game wore on.

“I thought we came out with a lot of energy, a lot of purpose early,” Catholic coach Mike Curry said. “They went to that 1-3-1 (zone) and kind of slowed the game down. We had some different things we tried to do against it, but at the end of the day you’ve still got to put the ball in the hole. Now it wasn’t from a lack of effort, but we’ve got to be better at the free-throw line and we got killed on the boards. But it was a good learning lesson for us. We’re going to find out what we’re made of.

Montgomery Academy scored the final four points of the third quarter to pull within 27-24, igniting the crowd as the game continued to look less like basketball and more like football. 

“They’re a really good team with really good players,” Arant said. “Their players fit well together. I think in the beginning of the game we got down and got a little frustrated with how the game was going but at every timeout, every end of the quarter, we kept preaching, ‘stay in it, keep fighting and you’re going to have a chance in the fourth quarter.’ We just scratched and clawed and finally made some shots inside in the second half that we missed in the first half.”

“We can’t just get frustrated on one miss,” Walker added. “Don’t think about it too much, just play and have fun.”

Montgomery Academy finally pulled even on a Walker basket, then took the lead on a 3 pointer by Jamal Cooper with 5:46 remaining. A Cooper layup a little more than two minutes later extended the lead to five, but then Cooper was called for a foul on Matthew Reardon’s 3-point attempt. After a heated discussion that involved both scorers, officials and Arant, Cooper was forced to sit with his fifth personal foul.

“That was a big thing because he only had four fouls,” Arant said. “The home book had him with five fouls so we had to move on. We lose not only the best player on our team but the best player in the city in our league. There’s three minutes left in the game and we have a four-point lead and it’s how can you maintain that lead without your primary ball handler, your leading scorer and one of your team leaders? I thought Nigel stepped up and was huge for us in the last three minutes, him and Judson (Lindsey) both. And Cole (Caddell) came in and played a primary ball handling role the last three minutes.

Walker said he rallied his teammates for the final three minutes and urged them to make smart decisions. 

“It changed the game a lot because Jamal is our ball handler,” he said. “I had to talk to my teammates Judson and Cole and say, ‘Y’all just take care of the ball, we don’t want to make any mistakes,’ because we were already up when Jamal fouled out so we just needed to take care of the ball and play good defense.”

MA had only a four-point lead at the time because Reardon had made his first free-throw attempt. When play resumed several minutes later, he made the next two as well, cutting the lead to a basket. The Eagles would extend the lead to six points against an ice-cold Catholic offense, but Ethan Binns sank a 3 pointer with 21 seconds left and Reardon hit another with seven seconds left to give the Knights a chance.

Trailing by two after a Walker free throw, Binns’ 3-point attempt at the buzzer was off line and the Eagles held on.  

“It’s almost getting to be a bigger rivalry than Trinity,” Walker said. “It’s getting crazy.

Despite sitting out the final 2:51, Cooper led the Eagles with 11 points, six rebounds, three assists and three steals. Walker added 11 points, 10 in the second half, and grabbed 14 rebounds. DJ Vinson also had a double double for the Eagles with 11 points and 11 rebounds.

Catholic, which shot just 16 percent (5 of 31) from the 3-point arc, 21.6 percent overall (13-60) and 50 percent (10-20) from the free-throw line, got 13 points, seven rebounds and four blocked shots from Reardon and eight points, 12 rebounds, three steals and three assists from T.J. Dudley.

“We’ve got to be better,” Curry said. “There’s no secret formula. We draw up a play, we’ve got to knock down shots. We weren’t tough enough around the basket.”