HANCEVILLE - After a tough first half in Thursday’s Class 2A Northwest Regional semifinal against No. 9 Mars Hill, Red Bay’s Gath Weatherford was in dire need of a pep talk. He got a good one, too, from the person who holds Weatherford to a higher standard than anybody else.
Himself.
“I was sitting in the locker room at halftime, just kind of talking to myself,” said Weatherford, who came into the day averaging a team-best 16.3 points per game but had managed only two on just three shot attempts in the first half. “I knew I wasn’t playing near to my potential. I was letting my team down, my coaches down and our fans down. I knew I had to play better.”
Weatherford’s self-motivational ploy worked like a charm. The 6’3 junior connected on his first shot of the third quarter, a three-pointer from just to the right of the top of the key that banked off the glass and in. [“Sometimes it helps just to see the ball go in,” Weatherford would later say.] He went on to finish with 18 second-half points on 7-for-13 shooting, spearheading perhaps the best 16 minutes of basketball Red Bay has played all season.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough.
The Tigers, making their first regional appearance in 23 years, trimmed a 16-point fourth-quarter deficit all the way down to two in the final 30 seconds, but Mars Hill made enough clutch free throws down the stretch to hold on for a 62-58 win and earn a date with Tanner in next week’s regional final.
“Hats off to Red Bay,” said head coach Jim South, whose Panthers improved to 20-9 on the season. “They’re a hard team to beat. They fought back. They had a great season. I know this was the first time they’d been here in quite some time. You have to give them a lot of credit. They played their guts out.”
In the end, a frustrating first half in which the Tigers (18-13) shot just 4-for-18 from the field proved too much to overcome.
“I was telling David [Corum, an assistant coach], that was probably our worst first half of the year,” said third-year head coach John Torisky, whose team trailed 24-13 at the break. “We’ve shot the ball well all year, especially in the playoffs, but we just couldn’t get anything to fall in the first half. I think a lot of it was just jitters and getting used to a new environment, but Mars Hill did a good job defensively, too.”
The two teams had only one day between Tuesday’s sub-regional round and Thursday’s regional semifinal to prepare, but that was sufficient time for Mars Hill to identify the three-point shot as one of Red Bay’s chief weapons. [The Tigers had made 167 threes on the season, including 54 by Weatherford.]
“We definitely wanted to take away the three-point shot and make them put the ball on the floor as much as we could,” South said.
The Panthers were on point in the first half, permitting Red Bay only three attempts—and zero makes—from beyond the arc. Weatherford’s bank job at the 6:15 mark of the third quarter must have broken the seal. The Tigers hit five threes (three by Weatherford and one each by Clay Allison and Braden Ray) in the second half, shooting a sizzling 58 percent (18-for-31) from the floor overall and scoring 45 points. They also went 4-for-4 from the foul line and turned the ball over just three times, playing darn near perfect basketball on the offensive end.
“We turned the ball over a few times, so they got some easy looks off that,” South said. “And they made some threes. The shots started falling. The Weatherford kid is a tough matchup for anybody, because he likes to face up so much. They like to take those two dribbles toward the basket, and when you help off the opposite side, they know how to find the open shooters.”
Weatherford followed up his banked-in three with another triple just 30 seconds later and then found the freshman Ray open underneath for an easy layup. Allison’s lefty drive and finish at the 4:10 mark gave the Tigers more points (14) in the first four minutes of the second half than they scored in the entire first half, pulling them to within seven at 34-27.
“Coach has preached to us all year not to let the outcome of your shot affect the way you play,” Weatherford said.
Mars Hill answered Red Bay’s charge with a quick 9-0 run, getting a three-point play from Joseph Hanson and then two huge shots from junior guard Avery Thrasher. The first was a step-back three from well beyond the arc (Thrasher’s fifth trey of the night), and the second was a driving scoop shot for a three-point play that gave the Panthers their largest lead of the game at 43-27.
Weatherford came right back with a three-point play of his own, but Mars Hill’s lead was still 16 points after a driving basket by Chandler McDaniel to open the fourth quarter. It seemed as though Red Bay had made its run, the Panthers had regained control, and that was that.
The Tigers, however, had other ideas.
“Resilient is a good word to describe these guys,” Torisky said. “They’re like pests. They don’t go away. They’ve been doing it all year. We were down 17 at the half against Central and came back to win on a last-second shot. When we got down today, it was fight or flight, and these guys kept fighting.”
Allison and Weatheford connected on back-to-back threes, and then a lefty layup by junior guard Colton Corum cut the lead to 10 at 50-40 with 5:40 remaining. Moments later, after Weatherford took a charge on the defensive end, Corum found Ray for a three from the top of the key to make it 51-43.
Hanson made a layup for Mars Hill, but Corum converted a three-point play to cut the lead to 53-46 with 3:42 to go. The Panthers missed a couple of key free throws on their next two trips, and Red Bay just kept coming. Ray dropped a dime to a cutting Weatherford for a layup, and then Weatherford drained a fadeaway from the left elbow to make it 54-50 with 2:40 left to play.
Hanson scored to push the lead back to six, but the fleet-footed Allison raced coast to coast for a layup just five seconds later to get the Tigers back within four. Red Bay had two chances to pull within a single point, but three-pointers by Weatheford and Ray missed the mark. Thrasher went 2-for-2 at the line to make it 58-52, but Corum answered with a pair of free throws to cut it back to four with 53.8 seconds left.
Mars Hill ran some time off the clock on its next possession before Red Bay freshman guard Jalen Vinson—perhaps the best pure athlete on the team already—swooped in from who-knows-where in the blink of an eye to steal the ball from Thrasher and take it the other way for a layup, cutting the lead to 58-56 with 24.8 seconds remaining.
The Tigers immediately fouled McDaniel, who calmly sank two free throws to push the lead back to four. Weatherford missed a three on Red Bay’s ensuing trip, but he chased down his own rebound and put it back in to make it 60-58. McDaniel was fouled again with 3.8 seconds on the clock, and the junior forward again made both free throws to seal the deal.
Red Bay’s comeback fell short, but the Tigers officially served notice on Thursday: After going from a 2-24 record last season to 18 wins and a breath away from the Elite Eight this season, after toiling for years in the shadow of Hall of Fame coach Donnie Roberts and the multi-time state champion Red Bay girls, the boys program is alive and well, and it’s not going away any time soon.
“Like I told our guys, Red Bay boys basketball has been an afterthought for a while,” said Torisky, who is married to Roberts’ youngest daughter, Leah, and served as his assistant on the 2015 state championship team before taking over the boys program the following year. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been down here, but today we proved we belong here. Guys like Gath, he’s been with me three years now. We won two games last year, but they just kept believing.
“This year, we were happy just to make it here, and whatever happened beyond that was a bonus. But we showed today that we can play with anybody.”
Weatherford finished with 20 points on Thursday, hitting that mark for the 11th time this season. Allison, a sophomore, added 13 points and three assists, and the 6’2 Ray scored 11 points on 4-for-6 shooting and also grabbed four rebounds. Corum scored all seven of his points in the fourth quarter and also finished with four boards and three assists.
Junior post player Peyton Green had three points and five rebounds, and Vinson and Tanner Hamilton each scored two.
The other three boys teams (Mars Hill, Tanner and Sulligent) in the 2A bracket in Hanceville had a total of 16 seniors on their respective rosters; Red Bay had none. The Tigers will bring back everyone, and reinforcements are coming from both a junior varsity team and a seventh-and-eighth-grade team that won county championships this season. The future is bright, and Thursday’s Hanceville experience will be immensely valuable going forward.
“It’s gonna help us a lot,” said Allison, a Vina transfer who finished second on the team in both scoring (9.1 points per game) and threes made (37) in his first season at Red Bay. “We were just happy to get here this year, but getting this experience is huge for us.”