A brutal schedule continued for the Winston Academy basketball teams last week and the boys and girls took one on the chin with three losses.
Tuesday night saw a match up of new and old Lady Patriot coaches as Kelley Greer had her first head-to-head meeting with former WA coach Moe Reed who is now at Heritage Academy. The first district game of the year went to the Lady Patriots of Heritage as they won 40-29 in Columbus.
Hailey Bradford led the team in scoring with 11 points but only four players could get shots to fall in the game.
“We’ve just got to make our shots. When we played Heritage, our shots would not fall,” Greer said. “We played really hard and really good defense, we just couldn’t make a shot.”
MAIS 4A, District 2 play continued on Friday when the Lady Patriots were back home and hosted Lamar School. It was more of the same of WA as they were in position offensively thanks to another strong defensive performance, but Greer mentioned the size of the Lady Raiders being an issue in what would be a 39-27 win for the visitors.
Again, Bradford led the Lady Patriots in scoring with 11 points but not much production beyond her.
For the second week in a row, the Lady Pats had to go up against a strong Pillow team and it was a dominant effort for the Lady Mustangs to sweep the season series. The offense remained an issue in this one as WA didn’t get point production in double figures from anyone as Betsy Karsen Hatcher scored six of the points and no one else had more than two.
“We just can’t shoot right now. We’re playing really hard, we just can’t make a shot,” Greer said. “Our defense is fine, our girls are just hesitant to shoot right now. I feel comfortable every other area on the court.”
WA (4-7) is getting back to work as the team takes final exams this week and they finish the pre-Christmas slate of games with a road trip to Oak Hill on Friday after exams finish on Thursday.
This will be the last game for the boys or girls until January and Greer is hoping to make it count.
“We played them during the summer and we won, but they had some girls that had torn ACL’s. It will be a really good match up,” Greer said of Oak Hill. “We’re going to have to run an offense that caters towards a different way than just with Hailey Bradford. As long as we start to get some offensive production we should be fine.”
BOYS
It was the same treacherous road for the boys team last week with the same three opponents and the same three losses.
WA had to go up against the defending district, north state, state and overall champions from a season ago as the mighty Heritage Academy Patriots look to go off again this year with much of the production returning. Heritage scored 30 points in the first quarter and made easy work of WA in a 78-30 victory to take the district win.
Brylee Wall was the top scorer for Winston scoring over half of the team’s points with 16 on the night and he hit four 3-pointers. Johnson Wells scored 13 points himself as there was just one other point scored by the rest of the team.
On Friday, WA’s competitiveness was in full force against Lamar. The Patriots and Raiders were deadlocked for most of the game as WA came out with a 12-11 lead and the two teams were tied at 27 at the half.
Leading 43-42 after three quarters, Lamar had a bit of a late surge in the fourth to get some distance and win the game 64-56. In the tough defeat, there was production all around for the Patriots as Johnson Wells scored 15 points, Cage Palmer 12 points and Wall had 10 points.
Saturday reverted back to the Heritage game for Winston as they had Pillow again and star Mustangs player Shane Houston-Stephens would show out against the Patriots.
Scoring 31 points in the game, Houston-Stephens outscored the Patriots alone in a 62-21 victory. Wall had 13 points in the loss.
WA (2-6) will also play at Oak Hill on Friday night.
