East Webster has aspirations on both the boys and girls’ squads of winning a district championship and it would have been easy for the Wolverines to look ahead to this week’s matchup with Calhoun City.
Instead, EWHS came out and played two district games and went up against rival Eupora twice in a row coming out on top in every game.
The Wolverine boys’ started the week with a road win at Bruce 55-37 as the Wolverines got 16 points from Reid Gatlin and 14 from Blake Slay and Hayes Fason with key contributors Chandler Hodges and Zy Ford out for the game.
District play continued on Friday night against rival Eupora and the Wolverines had their struggles in the first quarter. After holding a 13-9 lead in the first quarter, EWHS managed to pull away in the second and third quarters and coast in the fourth for the 52-34 win.
Hodges finished with16 points and Slay had 15 for the victory.
Despite Saturday’s rematch with the Eagles not being a district matchup, the importance of the game still felt urgent for the Wolverines., After struggling to get offense consistency in the first two quarters for a second-straight night, EWHS exploded in the third quarter outscoring the Eagles 28-5 and putting the game away as they rolled to a third-straight victory since the start of the new year, 62-26.
“We’re not a highly explosive offensive team, but we’ve tried to juice that up and getit going. We talked about it at halftime that we were doing a good job defensively, but we just weren’t putting any points on the board ourselves,” head coach Jon Ginn said. “We made a couple of adjustments offensively, but the biggest thing is we started hitting shots.”
Ginn was excited about the defensive piece in the first half but needed more from his offense. The defense would continue its work in the third quarter, but shots began to fall and Chandler Hodges started to emerge with 11 points in the quarter after scoring just two in the first half.
“Defensive intensity got up and little Bryson Johnston was a sparkplug (Saturday). He’s a freshman and he was all over the place; diving on the floor, coming up with steals, hit a three,” Ginn said. “The dunk by Chandler got everybody going, too. It was just a factor of things.”
The Wolverines scored more points in the third quarter than they did the entire first half combined and they allowed just five points by the Eagles. The fourth quarter allowed playing time for the younger Wolverines for a second-straight night as they cruised to the win.
EWHS(9-4, 2-0 Region 2) had 13 points from Hodges and 11 from Reid Gatlin. 11 of those 13 came in the big third quarter that helped spring the team to a win.
“We’ve been talking to him about being more aggressive and going to the goal more. He can shoot it, but he’s 6’6 and we need him attacking the rim,” Ginn said of Hodges. “I think he got a little taste of it and just kept going to the rim. The guys started looking for him.”
This week sets up a big matchup for the Wolverines as they play Calhoun City on Tuesday night in a game which could determine the winner of the district. The Wildcats are always the team to beat in Region 2 and this year is no exception. They were expected to play on Tuesday night.
“They’re always athletic and they’re so well-coached,” Ginn said of Calhoun City. “They lost aton of seniors last year but they’ve got four or five guys back who bring them some kind of experience from last year. When they wear Calhoun City on their shirt, they feel like they’re supposed to win. We’ve got to execute. We’ve got to be Superman stopping the train coming down the tracks because it’s going to be barreling.”
Girls
Like the boys’ team, EWHS had a perfect week last week. It started with a win over Bruce 52-30 as Shan Culpepper scored 12 points and Whitney Winters and Meri-Grace Gregg had 10 points each.
Friday night set up an interesting matchup with a much-improved Eupora team and the home Eagles gave the Lady Wolverines fits in the first half. It was a 12-10 lead by EWHS in the first quarter and 24-20 in the second. The zone by the Lady Wolverines would limit Eupora’s offense in the second halfas 3-pointers weren’t falling and they were able to take control of the game and win 53-39.
Winter and Culpepper each had 19 points in the victory.
“They’re a much improved ball club from last year,” Ginn said. “Coach (Cody) Ramer has done a really good job with them and I felt like they had a shot at getting us. I thought we responded. I thought Whitney Winter played one of her best ballgames of the year.”
The score was similar on Saturday with a 52-39 win for the Lady Wolverines but they went about business much different. EWHS had the advantage in that game from the start and a healthy lead before allowing some younger players to get in the game late. Culpepper finished the night with 15 points and moved the Lady Wolverines to 9-3 on the year with a 2-0 Region 2 record. They, too, have a big matchup with CCHS this week.
In addition to the wins on the court, EWHS got big news for individuals on their teams. Lauren Graves and Culpepper were selected to the1A/2A/3A North/South All-Star game by the Mississippi Association of Coaches and Hodges was picked to take part in the boys’ game.
