Class AAAAAA Boys: Lovejoy 58, South Cobb 56
South Cobb head coach Gregory Moultrie did not like the “Cinderella” label that had been slapped on his team, after it finished the regular season 5-20, but made a mad dash through the Region 4-AAAAAA tournament before losing to Pebblebrook in the championship game.
He preferred to call his team “scrappy.” And after Saturday evening’s 58-56 nail-biting loss to Lovejoy (17-8) in the first round of the state playoffs, Lovejoy head coach Rick Francis agrees with Moultrie’s assessment.
“I’ll tell you what … that’s a scrappy bunch over there,” Francis said, after his team withstood comeback after comeback, and led by as many as 11 points late in the third quarter, but still narrowly missed having to go into overtime. “Those jokers just wouldn’t go away.”
With :12 seconds left in regulation, Jahir Cabeza, who led all scorers with 18 points, missed the back end of a one-and-one free throw opportunity after hitting the first shot to give Lovejoy a 58-56 lead. The rebound on his missed free throw was tipped by a South Cobb player and was about to go out of bounds on the sideline before Jarrell Pinkney made a diving save for the Eagles, and flung the ball to teammate Joshua Holliday.
Holliday raced up the court and found Brandon Barnes on the left wing, whose deep three-point attempt bounced off the rim. The rebound was tipped around but found its way into the hands of South Cobb’s Wesley Ingram under the rim. Ingram quickly banked in a shot off the glass to the delight of the home crowd. But he barely missed getting the ball out of his hands before the buzzer sounded.
All three officials immediately waived off the basket, and just like that, the team that wouldn’t go away had to do just that.
“We knew we had a good team, we just had to jell and come together at the right time,” Moultrie said afterward, describing the rollercoaster ride of a season his team had. He missed the first three games of the season, due to an ejection in a pre-season tournament. Then South Cobb got a boost of extra talent when two players transferred in from other schools and helped the Eagles win three straight, including a victory over region rival Marietta, which won 18 games this season. But one of the transfers was found to be ineligible, forcing South Cobb to forfeit all three wins.
By the start of the region tournament, Moultrie said his club finally had a chance to play together as a cohesive unit, with him leading the way. The Eagles beat Kennesaw Mountain by one on a 40-foot shot at the buzzer, knocked off 20-win McEachern 57-51 after losing to that team 68-29 and 69-35 in the regular season, and then held off 20-win Hillgrove the next night, 55-53, in the tournament semi -final.
But Lovejoy, the No. 3 seed from Region 2-AAAAAA, maintained its composure – something the Wildcats had trouble doing during the regular season – and hung on to advance to a second round game at Tift County (25-3) on Tuesday. The Blue Devils, the No. 1 seed from Region 1-AAAAAA, drilled Tri-Cities 70-49 on Saturday.
“I don’t know how many games we lost this season because we didn’t maintain our composure down the stretch,” Francis said. “But tonight our guys stayed with our game plan and pulled it out. I was proud of the way they held it together and maintained their composure tonight.”
Lovejoy (58) – Jahir Cabeza 18, DeAndre Mathis 14, Marlon Carrington 12, Jaques Carter 8, Darius Bridges 5, Larry Pittman 1 (Marlon Reid had 11 rebounds).
South Cobb (56) – Wesley Ingram 12, Joshua Holliday 11, Brandon Barnes 11, Milique Johnson 10, Jarrell Pinkney 7, A. Davis 5.
