Regular season basketball is complete for the Winston Academy Patriots and Lady Patriots and they’ve both ended on a bit of a losing skid.
WA girls started the week by swallowing a tough pill against Winona Christian as they fell 49-42. The Lady Patriots fell behind 24-15 in the first half but stayed within striking distance in the second half but couldn’t quite fully return to the game.
Hailey Bradford took care of things offensively scoring 19 points including going 10-for-14 from the free throw line. Lana Boatner also helped get the offense going in the second half scoring 12 points in the game.
That was followed up by two tough ball games against very good Leake Academy and Kirk Academy teams as the Lady Rebels took the district win 77-48 and Kirk won 38-20.
Against Leake, Bradford and Boatner again led the way with 14 and 11 points respectively. Boatner had nine points against Kirk as the Lady Pats failed to get much offense going.
WA (10-15) finished out the regular season 1-9 in district play and will be the No. 6 seed in the district tournament in Meridian at Lamar School beginning Tuesday night. They play Heritage Academy at 4 p.m. and a win gets them a date with No. 2 Starkville Academy.
BOYS
It’s frustrating for the WA boys to have had the season that they’ve had to this point with a 3-19 record and 0-10 in district play.
The Patriots had made as much progress last year as they had in the previous 10 years but they also lost most of the team due to graduation. First year head coach Jordan Graham has had to start from scratch with this team and he’s seen some progress.
That included on Tuesday when the team took a tough loss on the road at Leake Academy 57-56. WA was trailing by 11 points at halftime before holding the Rebels to just four points in the third and getting within two points after three. LA was just able to escape with the win.
“We weren’t making a lot of shots and honestly weren’t playing really well,” Graham said. “At halftime we really challenged them to get stops and rebounds and we started stringing more stops together and executing better offensively.”
Brylee Wall was top scorer with 18 points and Cage Palmer finished with 13.
Despite a 62-38 loss to Kirk Academy that finished out the week, that too was progress from the last time the two teams played. Wall led WA with 12 points in the loss.
So now it’s a new season for the Patriots. They came out of the regular season without a district win so they enter the tournament at Lamar School the no. 6 seed and played the host Raiders at 5:15 on Tuesday in a game that happened after press time. If the Patriots won, they will play Starkville Academy on Thursday night at 7:45.
“The first time we played Lamar we played close and I thought we played well. We’ve improved a lot defensively since then and are playing as a team,” Graham said. “The message I’m going to convey to them at practice is that we’re right there and it will be just a matter of execution.
“They’re answering the call and doing what they need to do to improve, it’s just not translating into the win column. There’s a lot of progress being made and we just have to get over that hump. Maybe we can get something going in this tournament.”
