By REID TUCKER
The end of the 2015 wasn’t the rosiest for Walton County’s representatives at the Hilton Sandestin Beach Basketball Blowout, as both tournament host Freeport and the perennially solid Paxton were knocked out of contention.
Though both Freeport (2-9) and Paxton (14-3) found themselves outmatched against much bigger schools like White Plains and Oliver Springs or private institutions like Notre Dame Academy, the Bulldogs did manage to survive until Wednesday, Dec. 30 – one day longer than did the Bobcats.
The two local teams’ individual stories at the 21st annual holiday tournament made their exit all the more painful. Freeport won a thrilling 66-58 comeback against Tipton-Rosemark Academy on the opening day only to crushed 81-43 by Notre Dame on Tuesday, Dec. 29 and eliminated from play by Oliver Springs on Dec. 30, with the final score settling at 54-39. Paxton, for its part, suffered the program’s worst showing in many a year, losing in back-to-back games against Pope John Paul II by a score of 70-58 in their tournament opener and by a much closer 68-61 to White Plains.
Freeport, buoyed by a fantastic showing against Tipton-Rosemark, played an equally impressive first quarter against Notre Dame to turn in a 19-17 lead after the initial eight minutes of play, but the Fighting Irish apparently didn’t take that affront lightly. Notre Dame railed against the Bulldogs in the second quarter, outpointing the hosts 26-11 for a 43-30 halftime lead – still not too bad considering the evident talents of the prestigious private school’s ample bench, but what came next really was too bad for Freeport. The Irish’s offensive output was a little less in the third quarter at 21 points, but their defensive effort was astounding as they held Freeport to just nine points in the period before going on to score another 17 points in the fourth to the ‘Dawgs’ 4.
Tyler Byrd and the aptly named Akill Sledge each scored 18 points for Notre Dame, and, backed up by plenty of help from their teammates, the Irish were simply unstoppable. Freeport’s best scorers in the contest were Anthony Rucker and Case Woodard, who scored 10 points apiece.
Now pushed into the losers’ bracket, Freeport faced similarly tough odds against Oliver Springs, which led by a sizeable 22-6 margin at the end of the first quarter despite an odd back-and-forth, all-or-nothing scoring dynamic. That situation almost did an about-face in the second quarter, as Freeport came bounding back to outscore Oliver Springs 16-2 to make it a two-point ballgame at halftime, with a nice smattering of 3-pointers from Zack Seay, Caleb King-Williamson and Wesley Canaday. The second half saw Freeport fall behind even more, as the Bulldogs scored 17 points in the entire half to 17 points scored by Oliver Springs in the third quarter alone, swinging the advantage back to the visiting team.
Ultimately, Oliver Springs’ Taylor Murray was the highest scoring player on the floor, turning in a 15-point effort, while Woodard was again Freeport’s highest scorer with 12 points in the elimination game.
As for Paxton, the Bobcats did much better against White Plains than they did against Pope John Paul II, but free throw shooting pushed the Wildcats deeper into the consolation bracket Paxton was sent home. White Plains, last year’s consolation champs were astonishingly accurate at the stripe, making 27 foul shots for 31 attempts, and that accuracy was demonstrated nowhere more than in the third quarter, when the Wildcats mounted a 20-4 scoring advantage over Paxton thanks largely to shooting at the line.
Paxton closed the distance thanks mainly to 10 3s in the contest, with Grant Stewart claiming four in the first quarter on his way to leading Paxton in scoring with 18 points. Jerod Guthrie of White Plains got his four 3-pointers (of the Wildcats’ seven) in the fourth quarter.
The Bobcats actually opened up with a good 17-7 lead with a little less than three minutes to go in the first, but White Plains’ superior free-throw showing made it 17-16 by the buzzer, especially after a scuffle broke out under the basket, resulting in several players and both teams’ coaches catching techs. The withdrawal of Zach Varnum from the game put Paxton further off the pace of the Wildcats, who went up 36-31 by the half, though 3s from Stewart and Garrett Bodie kept the local team’s hopes alive. That is, until the brutal third quarter all but sealed the deal on White Plains’ eventual seven-point victory.