No. 3 Red Bay claims eighth straight area crown

The best run in program history continued for the Red Bay High School varsity boys’ basketball team Tuesday night as the Tigers routed Lamar County and captured their eighth consecutive area championship. Red Bay, ranked No. 3 in Class 2A by the Alabama Sports Writers Association, beat the Bulldogs by a final of 79-45 to defend its area throne and secure home-court advantage in its upcoming sub-region contest.

“Every year one of our goals is to win an area championship, and you don’t really think about eight in-a-row until you step back and look at it, but it’s pretty neat,” RBHS head coach John Torisky said. “We’ve had a lot of success in our area, and the only two losses we’ve had in the eight years we’ve won it were to Aliceville when they were in our region; we still won the area championship.”

Indeed, the Tigers are on a 28-game winning streak against area opponents (including in area tourney games) since last losing to Aliceville in January of the 2021-22 season.

“We’ve been really fortunate and have had a lot of success and a lot of that goes to the players,” Torisky added. “We’ve had some really good players to come through, and they understand what it means to win and how important it is to win in the area because it sets us up for the sub-regional and hopefully the regional after that.

“Everyone, they know what’s expected of them here at Red Bay, and I’m proud we’ve been able to get our program to where they expect to win the area every year. It’s not as easy as it seems,” he added.

Red Bay (22-5) didn’t waste much time in dispatching Lamar County to win the anticipated title. The Tigers doubled up on the Bulldogs 16-8 in the first quarter before really opening things up in the second. RBHS went on a 11-0 run to begin the second period and held a 22-point lead by the end of it. The two teams went into halftime with the score 39-17.

After the break Red Bay continued to distance itself from Lamar County. The Tigers’ advantage reached as high as 30 points midway through the third quarter before RBHS pushed it to 34 by the end of regulation.

Home-court advantage made a difference for the Tigers in their win Tuesday night, Torisky said, and he added that he felt his team performed very well on both ends of the court.

“Lamar County is a good team. I’ve watched them a lot this year, and I think they’ve improved a lot from last year. But I think us being at home was definitely a big advantage for us and we’ve been shooting the ball really well. The last 10 games our shooting as a team has been lights out,” the Red Bay head coach said. “We don’t really focus on making shots as much as we do getting stops, and when we get stops we can run and find those open guys. (Tuesday) night I thought we played really fast and it was because the guys were getting stops on defense. The guys just kind of relaxed and played and it was one of the better performances offensively we’ve had this season.

“If we can continue to focus on the defensive side, our offense tends to be rewarded more, so that’s where our focus is,” Torisky added.

In, as Torisky stated, one of Red Bay’s better offensive performances, two players scored 20-plus points. Senior Bryant Harris led the way with 26 points and sophomore Khalil Luster finished with 22. Senior Landyn Lewey also hit double digits with 10 points.

Up next for Red Bay is a home sub-region game against the runner-up from Area 11, Falkville (19-11).

“Falkville is a pretty good team. They’ve got some pretty good players—their point guard is one of the better guys with the basketball we’ll see this year, so we’ve got to contain him. And they’ve got some good shooters, as well,” Torisky said.

“Our focus will be how do we slow them down and get stops. Offensively, we’re in a good rhythm right now so we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing—we don’t really need to change much. For us it’ll be about tightening down on defense, and if we can get it to where they have to take tough shots and we can get rebounds then I think we’ll have a really good shot at winning on Saturday,” he added. “Defense and rebounding should get us pretty far this year.”

Red Bay is scheduled to host the Falkville Blue Devils at the RBHS gymnasium on Saturday, February 14, with tip-off set for 6 p.m.