Russellville, Red Bay split the spoils in varsity basketball doubleheader

The Russellville High School and Red Bay High School varsity girls’ and boys’ basketball teams faced off at the Russellville Middle School gymnasium on Monday night with each school getting a win.

The RHS varsity girls earned a 75-50 victory over the RBHS Lady Tigers and the Red Bay boys defeated the Golden Tigers 67-50 in the nightcap.

Russellville varsity girls’ basketball head coach Jermaine Groce gives instructions to his players during a timeout during the Lady Golden Tigers’ game against Red Bay on November 24.

The girls’ game got the evening started and it was all Russellville from the tip.

RHS jumped out to a 6-0 start and then expanded its lead to 24-11 by the end of the first period. Just two minutes into the second quarter, Red Bay called a timeout after the Lady Golden Tigers went on an 11-0 run to start the period. And at halftime, the hosts, led by 16 first-half points by junior guard Ella Copeland, had a 48-23 advantage.

“My three leaders—Laila Hill, Ella Copeland, and Angeleah Smith—all love to get in transition and get one-on-one, two-on-one opportunities, and the numbers that we have lends us to be able to keep pace with people or speed the game up and get up quick shots,” Russellville head coach Jermaine Groce said. “Tonight we also worked our defensive schemes a little bit, trying to keep people off balance. I think we ran three defenses tonight and kept changing things up, keeping them off balance, especially in the first half.”

Red Bay was able to get more shots up in the second half against Russellville, but the Lady Golden Tigers were playing younger, less experienced athletes in the final 16 minutes.

“Obviously anytime you can play 13 people it’s a good thing. And it’s pretty good to have an opportunity to go all the way through your rotation and get some of your bench players in,” Groce said. “Those reps and those minutes are going to be meaningful once we get into area play and deeper into the season.”

At the end of the third quarter, RHS led 60-37 and finished the game with a 25-point advantage.

“To this point in the season I think we’re playing pretty well,” Groce said. “We can be a little bit more disciplined in some areas—I’d like to see our half court offense be a little more polished, but we’re playing pretty well.

“Overall I’m pleased with where we’re at at this point. This was our sixth game tonight…and we’ve competed in all of them. That’s what I like to see. We want to face different competition and see different things like we did tonight. That’s only going to help us in preparation for what we might see against West Point and Lawrence County and other teams later in the season,” he added.

Copeland finished with a game-high 24 points in the Lady Golden Tigers’ win. Senior Laila Hill had 19 points and sophomore Angeleah Smith dropped 17. Kamryn Kuykendall led Red Bay with 16 points and Katlyn Lindley added 12. Russellville improved to 4-2 while Red Bay dropped to 0-4.

In the boys’ game, the first half was very competitive, but Red Bay pulled away in the second half to win by 17 points.

The first 16 minutes was a game of runs. The Tigers took the initial lead, 7-2, but Russellville stormed back and went on a 15-0 run to end the first quarter up 17-7.

Red Bay, in the second quarter, started to chip away at the hosts, though. With 4:30 left in the half, the Tigers’ standout Khalil Luster made a layup to tie the game up at 21 before a Bryant Harris three-pointer regained the lead for the Tigers 24-23.

Red Bay senior Jeremiah Thorne passes the ball to a teammate during the Tigers’ November 24 game at Russellville.

The visitors would go into the intermission up 31-29.

Red Bay would begin to pull away midway through the third period. The Tigers went up by six points and then made it nine, the score 51-42 heading into the final act.

Dalton Lowery, Jeremiah Thorne, and Landyn Lewey all hit critical threes to help extend Red Bay’s lead while Luster and senior Jaxon Vinson did a good job rebounding and getting put-backs over the Golden Tigers.

In the fourth quarter, Russellville trailed by 12 and then 14 and then by 18 very late before falling by a final score of 67-50.

Red Bay head coach John Torisky, who like many basketball coaches in the area just got his football-playing athletes to the team, said he felt his squad was gelling well in the game and did what needed to be done to get the win on the road.

“We’ve been playing some really good teams to start, but I think the guys were hungry tonight,” Torisky told the Franklin Free Press. “This was our fourth game, the third game with a couple of our football guys, so I just felt tonight we meshed better and were playing together.

“We guarded better tonight and we rebounded—those are two priorities for us. And we took care of the ball a little bit better in the second half,” he added.

“We rebounded well, especially on the offensive glass, and that’s one of our strengths. Khalil and Jaxon really took it upon themselves to go get boards, and I think we were getting some of those easy fouls, easy put-backs, and I think that was the difference in the game.”

Four Tigers finished with double-digit points in the win: Luster had a team-high 18, Vinson scored 14, Harris finished with 12, and Lowery had 11. Sir Williams had a game-high 24 points for the Golden Tigers in the loss. 

Red Bay now stands at 1-3 this season and Russellville is 1-1.