By T. Scott Boatright
CADEVILLE — The intensity was flaming hot Saturday evening as Choudrant and Simsboro faced off for the District 2-B boys basketball regular season title at the West Ouachita High School gym.
And by the time the smoke cleared, Simsboro had held on for 75-63 in a game of see-saw surges that saw both teams get hot and then cool off at various points in the tiebreaking showdown played after both closed out their district schedules at 5-1 after splitting the regular-season games in which they had met.
“It was another amazing basketball game,” said Tigers coach Adam Wodach. “We played three times in less than three weeks and it feels like every game has been an absolute barnburner. I’m speechless. I honestly think that if we played (Choudrant) 10 times, we still might end up in a split.
“I’m just proud of our guys — proud of the way we responded. We were up six (57-51) going into the fourth quarter and they cut it to three. I looked at the team during a timeout and told them we’re either going to figure it out or we’re not. I think we killed about three minutes there at the end of the clock and we had struggled with that this year.”
It was Choudrant which had to find its composure early on. Simsboro opened with a 6-0 run over the opening 2:06 of the contest before the Aggies scored on a Lawson Stevens jump shot in the key.
Lawson added a second short jumper before Braden Soto’s 3-point at the 4:13 mark of the opening stanza put the Aggies on top 7-6.
Choudrant built five-point leads three different times before the first quarter ended, but the Tigers kept fighting back, with Ahamd Smith’s 3-pointer with 9.5 seconds left in the stanza sending the teams into the second period tied at 17-17.
“They were composed,” Wodach said of his team. “We had a couple of moments there where we lost composure but I think we found it quicker than we had (in any other game) this year.”
Wodach said building that composure was a year-long process
“That was a year, including the summer, of work trying to get them to understand how basketball is a game of runs,” the first-year head coach of the Tigers said. “You want to control momentum. You can’t stop a team from scoring, but if you can control momentum you’re probably going to win the game. I thought we did a better job of that tonight.”
In the second quarter, Simsboro built as much as a five-point advantage at 24-19 before the Aggies quickly battled back, taking a 28-26 lead with 2:56 left in the first half on a pair of free throws made by senior center Michael Jones.
Two more Jones free throws tied the game at 34-34 with 3.2 seconds remaining before halftime, but the Tigers responded with Jakaleb Modest taking the inbounds pass, moving just pass the halfcourt line and arcing a shot right through the net to send the teams into the locker rooms at halftime with Simsboro on top 37-34.
And again, Wodach credited composure playing a key role in that ending to the first 16 minutes of play.
“What I’m proud of about that shot was (Modest’s) composure,” Wodach said. “He dribbled it all the way to half court to shoot the ball. He wasn’t rushed. He didn’t go off of one foot. He just stayed cool.
“I knew if he hit that one he was going to stay hot (in the second half).”
Modest said he knew as soon as he shot the ball that it was going to find its mark.
“I knew when it came off my hands, it was like ‘Oh yeah,’ it’s going in,” Modest said.
Simsboro built as much as a seven-point lead in the third quarter to give the Tigers that six-point lead heading into the final stanza.
A Jones putback pulled the Aggies within three points at 57-54 with 6:33 left on the clock, but that’s as close as Choudrant would get as the Tigers milked the clock for the win.
Modest played a big role in helping Choudrant do just that, scoring 11 of his points in the fourth quarter.
“They went out and made plays,” said Aggies coach Ryan. “We hung in there. The big thing was they kept scoring. They consistently were really good at putting the ball in the basket. They kept hitting those mid-range jumpers and pulled down some rebounds on us. That was the message at halftime, that I thought if we cleaned up the boards and got more aggressive at going to the basketball.
“Simsboro did a great job of trying to isolate Mike and were doing some different things in the first half where they had some bodies on him. But I told the team after the game that two weeks from now (once the playoffs begin), we’re going to be fine. We’ve been fortunate to play them three times because what we’re going to see in the first couple of rounds is basically nothing compared to today.”
Jones led Choudrant with 24 points while Stevens added 11 and Tucker Batterton chipped in with nine.
Modest finished with a game-best 25 points while Ahmad Smith added 14 for the Tigers, who also received 11 points each from Justin Prudhomme and Tristan Deloney.
The diminutive Prudhomme did much of his damage taking it to the basket, wading through the Aggie’s much taller interior, even sinking a pair of baskets off of reverse layups running along the baseline.
“I just try to play fearless going to the rim,” Prudhomme said. “I don’t see my height as a disadvantage, I just see it as an advantage to create.”
The Aggies, now 22-13, will play at Beekman-Charter on Wednesday in a tune-up game heading into the announcement of boys playoff brackets next weekend.
Smith said the barnburners his team has played against Simsboro so far this season will help his Aggies once postseason play begins.
“We go for so much of the season where everybody just plays zone (defense),” Smith said. “All we see is 2-3 or 1-2-2. But (the Tigers) come out and are always in your face. They’re aggressive and they pressure you. I think it’s great for us because it helps steer our focus toward that.
“And that’s what teams in the playoffs do. They stay up and man you, so a lot of things (the Tigers) do is just going to prepare us for the future, and I think we’re way better off for getting to play them, that’s for sure.”
Simsboro, now 23-12, will next play at Castor on Monday before playing host to Castor on Friday.
