BELGREEN - Eli Hiser heard the chatter.
Belgreen is vulnerable.
Belgreen is struggling.
Belgreen might not be the favorite any more.
Hiser and his Bulldog teammates (“brothers,” as he calls them) listened to all the talk in the days leading up to the Franklin County Tournament. They absorbed it. They channeled it. They owned it.
“We kind of kept it to ourselves,” said Hiser, a senior guard. “And we used it as fuel.”
To be fair, the notion of Belgreen’s sudden vulnerability wasn’t entirely without merit. After dropping just two of 16 games against county competition since the start of last season, the Bulldogs lost that many in the span of three days the week before the tournament, falling by three at home to Phil Campbell and by eight on the road to Tharptown. They also weren’t healthy, with junior guard Brant Bragwell—the team’s second-leading scorer and top perimeter threat—sidelined by a bum knee.
And so the talk grew louder, and the vultures started circling. Despite being the defending county champs and the No. 1 seed, the Bulldogs were suddenly the Underdogs.
“Dropping a couple of games the way we did kind of left the door open,” head coach Clint Isbell acknowledged. “But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Instead of coming in as the favorites by far, our guys got a chance to play with a chip on their shoulders.
“I still thought we had a great opportunity in front of us.”
If this year’s county tournament taught us anything, it’s this: A Bulldog, cornered and wounded, still has its bite.
After settling a score with Phil Campbell in Saturday’s semifinal, Belgreen grinded out a 64-53 double-overtime win over second-seeded Red Bay in Monday’s final, claiming its second consecutive county crown in front of a raucous over-flow crowd in the Belgreen High School gym.
Rumors of the Bulldogs’ demise, it seems, were slightly exaggerated.
“These were two gutsy wins,” said Isbell, whose team improved to 17-5 overall. “You have to give credit to Phil Campbell and Red Bay. They made it tough on us. Red Bay played extremely hard tonight. Coach [John] Torisky has done a great job with them. We have nothing but respect for the job he’s done and the way he runs that program. They’ve really turned things around since last year.”
Hiser echoed his coach’s sentiments, heaping praise on a Tiger team that has gone from 2-24 a year ago to 13-8 this season.
“That’s a really good team we just beat,” said Hiser, who knocked down Belgreen’s only three three-pointers of the night and also went 4-for-6 from the foul line in the two overtime periods on his way to scoring a team-high 17 points. “Red Bay deserves a lot of credit. That was a great game.”
The largest lead of the first half for either team was six points by Belgreen following a three by Hiser that made it 24-18 late in the second quarter. Red Bay responded with a closing 9-2 run, getting a pair of buckets from 6’3 junior Gath Weatherford, a three-point play from 6’2 freshman Braden Ray and a fast-break layup from Jalen Vinson (another ninth-grader) to take a 27-26 lead into the locker room.
Weatherford, limited to less than 10 minutes of game action due to foul trouble in Saturday’s semifinal win over Tharptown, made up for lost time on Monday night, scoring 11 first-half points and then adding seven more in the opening four minutes of the third quarter to help the Tigers stretch the margin to five at 34-29.
The Bulldogs responded by going to work at the foul line, hitting six straight free throws to trim the lead to one at 36-35. Peyton Green scored in the paint for Red Bay, but Hiser drilled his third three of the night to tie the game. A tip-in by Ray barely beat the third-quarter buzzer and put the Tigers on top 40-38.
As it turned out, though, the drama was only just beginning.
Belgreen opened the fourth quarter with an 8-0 run, surging to a 46-40 lead when Payton Scott found fellow senior Seth Taylor for a layup right around the 4:00 mark. Junior guard Hunter Bays answered with a huge three for Red Bay, and then a spinning lefty layup by Weatherford cut the lead to one at 46-45 with 2:35 left in regulation.
After five straight empty trips between the two teams, Torisky called timeout with less than a minute to go and drew up a play designed to get Ray a clean look from the right block. The freshman came open off a cross-screen along the baseline, caught a pass from Weatherford and dropped in a layup to give the Tigers a 47-46 lead with 45 seconds remaining.
The Bulldogs didn’t blink. A silver lining in the recent absence of Brant Bragwell (who sat out Monday for the sixth time in seven games and is expected to miss another week or two with his knee issue) has been the emergence of Seth Taylor as a reliable third option alongside 6’6 junior Mason Bragwell and senior point guard Jacob Mayberry. Taylor entered Monday’s action averaging 12.7 points across six January games, and his driving layup with 25 seconds left in regulation put Belgreen back in front 48-47.
“Those two guys right there are the heart and soul of our team,” Hiser said after the game, pointing in the direction of Taylor and Scott. “They do so much for us. They get us going.”
Weatherford, who would finish with a game-high 22 points, drove the lane on Red Bay’s ensuing trip and was fouled with 14.7 seconds remaining. An 84-percent foul shooter on 97 attempts coming into Monday, Weatherford hit the first to tie the game but then missed the second (following a timeout by Belgreen in between).
The Bulldogs had a chance to take the lead, but Red Bay junior guard Colton Corum came up with a clutch defensive play, sliding over in front of a driving Scott to take a charge with 4.7 seconds left. Red Bay called timeout and then inbounded the ball to speedy point guard Clay Allison, who in turn got the ball to Ray, whose open 16-footer bounced off the front of the rim as time expired.
Whereas the fourth quarter featured two teams trading clutch shots, the two extra periods featured, well, two teams running on fumes and plainly feeling the pressure of overtime with the county title hanging in the balance.
“Maybe both teams were tired, but I hope that’s not it,” Torisky said afterwards. “I know Belgreen’s not very deep with Brant being out, and we’re not real deep either. But we’ve been dealing with that all year. There were times when we executed well in key moments, but at other times we just didn’t execute from a mental standpoint.”
Specifically, the foul line proved to be Red Bay’s undoing—an ironic twist considering that the Tigers came into Monday shooting 70 percent from the line as a team. After attempting only three free throws in regulation, Red Bay shot just 3-for-12 from the line in the two overtime periods. Combine that with 1-for-8 shooting from the field, and the Tigers scored just five points in eight minutes of overtime action.
“We had some really good free throw shooters at the line, guys like Gath and Braden and Clay and Colton,” Torisky said. “Those are our four best guys. They all shoot at least 65 percent, and two of them shoot over 80. Getting those guys to the line is about as good as we can hope for.”
Weatherford and Peyton Green each made 1-of-2 at the line in the first OT, and Mayberry countered with two free throws for Belgreen. Neither team made a field goal in the first extra period, and after Bragwell’s drive to the basket came up empty in the waning seconds, the game went to a second overtime.
Belgreen took the lead on a pair of free throws by Hiser at the 3:18 mark, and then Maybery hit a driving bank shot to make it 54-50. Hiser then took a charge on one end and grabbed an offensive rebound on the other, finding Bragwell for a layup to stretch the lead to six. The Bulldogs went 8-for-12 from the foul line from that point on, including 3-for-4 from Bragwell and 3-for-4 from reserve guard Gaven Taylor, who played several key minutes down the stretch after Seth Taylor fouled out.
Weatherford and Corum also fouled out in the second overtime, conjuring up memories of Red Bay’s previous trip to Belgreen in mid-November. Weatherford, Ray and Allison all fouled out that night, and the Tigers let a late 10-point lead slip away in a 56-53 loss. Their largest lead on Monday was five points, but Torisky still couldn’t shake the feeling that his team had let another one get away.
“We had them again,” he said, “and we let them out of the box. Belgreen is a good team. They know how to win. Our guys have to learn how to finish off a game. It’s the biggest thing keeping us from becoming a great team instead of just a good one.”
The Tigers couldn’t overcome a huge discrepancy at the foul line on Monday, when they finished just 5-for-15 compared to 27-for-35 by Belgreen. This win couldn’t have been more different than last year’s county final, when the Bulldogs blitzed Phil Campbell with a 30-4 run to open the game and cruised to a 73-52 rout.
So was this one more fun?
“I don’t know if I’d say that,” Isbell said with a weary smile. “This one took a lot out of us. But our seniors really came through for us. I thought that was the difference late in the game. We had some senior guys step up and make senior plays when we needed them. This was their last opportunity to win a county championship, and they wanted to make the most of it. They got one last year, and they really wanted to go out on top.”
Hiser and his teammates accomplished exactly that.
“I’m so proud of these guys,” he said. “These guys are my brothers. We wanted to do this for each other, and for Coach Isbell, who works his butt off every day and does such a great job coaching this team, and for these fans, too.”
Monday’s capacity crowd took Torisky back to his formative days playing high school hoops in southern Illinois.
“Basketball up there is like football down here,” he said. “We had crowds like this and games like this in the regular season. It’s the way basketball should be played. I thought the atmosphere was great, and the support we got from our fans was great. Our guys just have to learn to feed off that.”
Hiser finished with eight rebounds to go along with his 17 points. Bragwell shot 7-for-8 from the line and had 15 points and six boards. Mayberry went 5-for-6 at the line and scored 13 points, and Seth Taylor added eight. Scott had six points and six rebounds.
Weatherford shot 9-for-17 from the field to finish with 22 points and nine rebounds. Ray scored nine points, and Allison finished with eight.
Afterward, Isbell was asked to compare this year’s county title to last year’s.
“This one feels just as good,” he said, “and maybe better.”
