Staying alive
- Updated: February 1, 2021
Weaver overcomes two sizable deficits, beats Ohatchee to force a Tuesday showdown with Pleasant Valley for second in 3A Area 11
By Al Muskewitz
East Alabama Sports Today
WEAVER — The Weaver Bearcats didn’t want to leave anything that had to do with their post-season lives to chance and they played down the stretch Monday like those lives depended on it.
Because they did.
The Bearcats gave themselves a chance to play for a high seed and home game in their area tournament Tuesday after outlasting Ohatchee in an absolute rollercoaster of a game 77-67.
The winner of Tuesday’s Pleasant Valley-Weaver game will be the host team and No. 2 seed when the two teams meet for the third time in 12 days in the opening round of the Class 3A Area 11 tournament Feb. 9.
Had the Bearcats lost to Ohatchee and beat PV, it would have forced a three-way tie and double coin toss for 2, 3 and 4. Had they lost both games, they would have been the 4 seed and opened the area tournament at Piedmont.
“We knew we had to win today so we came in and got it done,” Weaver sophomore guard Jackson Williams said. “We knew we had to win no matte what; we didn’t want it to have to come down to a coin toss or anything like that. We just kept playing hard no matter what.”
For the Bearcats, only three days removed from COVID-19 quarantine, the game was good, bad, good, really bad and eventually really good. They they rallied twice to earn their biggest victory of the season to date.
They led by eight in the first quarter and seven with four minutes left in the third. And they were down 14 with 3:00 left in the first half and nine with less than six minutes to play, then won it with a 19-0 run over the next four and a half minutes.
“The adversity that these kids overcame — from being out, Saturday’s game and then tonight down not just a little bit and then came back — I don’t know what else to say but these kids just kept fighting,” Bearcats coach Beau Winn said. “Overcoming adversity is one thing we’ve tried to instill in these kids, that when you get down you’ve just got to dig down deep.
“You can’t say enough about these kids. We didn’t want to leave it up to chance. We didn’t want to leave it up to a coin flip if we could do it. We tried our best to control our own destiny and, boy, (Ohatchee coach) Bryant (Ginn) and them made it tough on us.”
Weaver jumped out to an early 17-9 lead behind Kohl Perry, but then Ohatchee’s Trey Pesnell started his crusade to give the Indians every chance by scoring the last seven of the quarter to bring it back to a one-point game.
David Reed, a home-schooled student who plays on all the Ohatchee sports teams, hit five 3-pointers in the second quarter and the Indians went up 37-25 with 2:03 left in the second before Weaver cut the margin to six at halftime.
The Bearcats opened the second half with a pair of 3s and a 17-4 run to take a 48-41 lead with half the third quarter to play. That’s when Pesnell got hot again. He scored 12 points in a 15-2 run that gave Ohatchee a 56-50 lead heading into the fourth quarter.
Pesnell scored a career-high 36 points, 22 in the second half.
“He played like he knew what this game meant, offensively and defensively,” Ginn said. “We just couldn’t get some of the other guys to play that same way. We kind of came out lackadaisical in the first quarter. I was trying to tell them how much all this meant to us … Defensively we weren’t very good down the stretch.”
The Indians led 62-53 with 5:55 to play, but then Weaver took their game up a notch. They scored 19 straight points and had a 72-62 lead when Jacob Buckelew finally ended the drought with a 3-pointer with 1:33 to play.
Even when Kyle Knight fouled out early in the run, putting the Indians in the double bonus for the rest of the game, the Bearcats didn’t miss a beat.
That’s where Williams and Jeffrey Miles stepped in. They both had eight points in the fourth quarter. Williams scored seven in the final six minutes, Miles had six and Brendyn Knight had five.
“Jackson, I don’t know if he ate his Wheaties this morning or what, but he stepped up huge – I don’t know if there’s a bigger word for it than that,” Winn said. “When Kyle fouled out Jackson was the next man up and he stepped up.”
Weaver 77, Ohatchee 67
OHATCHEE – Jacob Buckelew 1 0-0 3, Trey Pesnell 11 12-18 36, Justin Powell 0 0-0 0, Konnor Baswell 1 0-0 3, Aiden Simpson 0 0-0 0, David Reed 5 0-0 15, Kolbe Crook 4 2-6 10. Totals 22 14-24 67.
WEAVER – Brendyn Knight 3 8-9 15, Kyle Knight 6 0-0 14, Jackson Williams 2 5-9 9, Kohl Perry 4 0-0 9, Dawson Brooks 1 0-0 2, Jeffrey Miles 7 0-2 15, Trevor Clendenin 3 0-0 7, Tristan Brown 3 0-0 6. Totals 29 13-20 77.
Ohatchee 16 21 19 11 – 67
Weaver 17 14 19 27 – 77
3-point goals: Ohatchee 9 (Buckelew, Pesnell 2, Baswell, Reed 5); Weaver 6 (B. Knight, K. Knight 2, Perry, Miles, Clendenin). Fouled out: Powell, K. Knight. Total fouls: Ohatchee 18, Weaver 20. Officials: Lackey, Taylor, Wilson.
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