High School Sports

JACKSONVILLE — Cherokee County coach Shane Reid didn't have to do an extensive study of the final stat sheet at the post-game press conference. He knew exactly what went wrong in the Warriors' 72-53 loss to Guntersville in the AHSAA Class 4A Northeast Regional basketball final at Pete Mathews Coliseum Saturday afternoon.

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The telling figure — his teams' 6-for-35 shooting from the behind the 3-point line — nearly leaped off the page.

"I'm not comfortable with us living and dying by the 3-point shot," said the second-year coach of his team's abysmal outside shooting. "The last few games we've taken 11, nine, and I think we took 10 the other night…We're still young, and sometimes we don't take good shots but we're getting there."

Cherokee County attempted 15 triples, making just two, and 16 two-pointers in the first half as it shot 29 percent from the field and fell behind by double digits, 36-25, going into the break.

Meanwhile, Guntersville (30-5) shot 50 percent from the field on 14-for-28 shooting in the first half. The Wildcats, who will face Bullock County in the state semifinals at the Birmingham Jefferson Convention Complex Tuesday at 5:30 p.m., extended their lead to 24 at 58-34 going into the fourth by virtue of a 22-9 third quarter.

Guntersville filled it up even more in the second half, knocking down 12 of 18 field goal attempts on 66 percent shooting to close out the game.

"We played well early," said Guntersville coach Ronnie Stapler. "That's been the key the last three times we've played them. We sort of knocked them on their heels."

The Warriors (23-11) defeated the Wildcats by 10 at home in December in Area 13 play, but fell to the Wildcats by 25 on the road in late January and 29 in the area championship on Feb. 11.

On Saturday, Cherokee County couldn't throw a penny in the ocean in the beginning, clanging seemingly countless shots off the rim before getting on the board.

Guntersville jumped out to a 7-0 lead and the Warriors didn't score their first field goal until midway point of the first quarter when Nick Wheeler stroked a jump shot with exactly 4:00 remaining in the first quarter to move the Warriors to within nine at 12-3.

"I just think they (his team's shots) weren't falling," said sophomore guard Coty Blanchard when asked if the Wildcats defense had anything to do with his teams' ineptitude on offense; He scored just 10 points on 4-for-12 shooting after going for 18 points against Saks in the regional semifinals

"You can't have that when there's a trip to the state championship on the line," he said. "You have to come out and knock them down."

Cherokee's County's propensity to rely upon the outside shot too much the game following a stellar performance has been somewhat of a recurring theme over the course of the season, Reid said.

"We've done that throughout the season this year," he said. "We need to settle into the right mix of 2s and 3s, and I always tell them you to need to take the right 3. When you do what we did today, you're going to struggle. I don't know what happened. We decided to be shooters instead of basketball players."

Reid was ejected with 7:13 to go in the fourth after receiving a pair of technical fouls for arguing the disparity in foul calls.

Down 23 at the time, the Warriors responded with their best spurt of the game, putting together a 13-4 run to trim their deficit to 14 at 56-42 with 2:46 to go but faltered late. They scored just one more point in the game on a Keddrick Barrett free throw.

Guntersville point guard Trevor Diamond scored 21 points to lead all scorers. Tournament MVP Darius Steger added 17 and Ben Cooper patrolled the paint scoring 14 rebounds and pulling down just as many rebounds.

Senior Nick Wheeler led Cherokee County with 14 points while Barrett scored 10.