by Malcolm Butler
Entering Tuesday night’s District 1-1A showdown with Cedar Creek, Haynesville wasn’t known for its three-point shooting ability.
However, the Golden Tornados drained 9-of-24 from behind the arc against the Cougars zone defense to defeat Creek at The Brickhouse by a score of 58-39.
Playing without two senior starters in Cannon Robbins (injury) and Jack Bell (illness), the Cougars (12-6, 2-2) fought valiantly against a Haynesville (10-1, 3-1) squad that had a significant height advantage.
“I thought we did a really good job on our gameplan,” said Creek head coach Lance Waldron. “Our gameplan was to limit the touches by (Andrea Brooks). Landon Hall did an outstanding job on him all night. He didn’t get his touches. All of his (eight) points came in the fourth quarter and by then the game was over. Gameplan wise they did exactly what we wanted to do.”
While the Cougars were preventing the post presence of Haynesville to impact the game early, the Cougars could not dodge the three-point shooting of the Tors.
Haynesville connected on five first quarter three-pointers in building a 19-10 lead and hit a total of eight in the opening half on their way to a 31-18 advantage at halftime.
“We were willing to give up some threes,” said Waldron. “But that didn’t work in our favor. Our best bet was to pack the lane and make them shoot threes. In our scouting report, they weren’t a very good three-point shooting team. But they were tonight.”
Despite Haynesville hitting four three-pointers in the first four minutes of the contest, the Cougars stayed within striking range as back-to-back buckets by Brett Bell, including a three-pointer, close the deficit to 16-10 with 2:50 to play in the first quarter.
Creek kept the deficit at six until Haynesville connected on its fifth trifecta of the opening quarter to extend the lead to 19-10.
Haynesville opened the second quarter with its sixth three-pointer but two free throws by Jake Terry and a three-pointer by Cameron Temple made the score 22-15 with 6:50 to play in the stanza. However, Creek scored just three more points over the rest of the half and trailed 31-18 at the break.
“We will need to look at film and see what direction we want to go,” said Waldron. “We got to figure out a way to generate more points. That’s always difficult when you lose a scorer like (Cannon). We will need to share the ball a lot more, and we struggled with that at times tonight.”
Creek opened the third quarter on a quick 4-0 run as Temple drained a 15-footer and Hall added a paint bucket to close the Haynesville lead to 31-22. But back-to-back three-pointers by the Tors pushed it to 15 points and the Cougars would never get closer than 12 the rest of the way.
Terry led Creek with 12 points while Brett Bell added 10, Temple seven and Hall six.
Cedar Creek will travel to Lincoln Prep Friday.
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Cedar Creek Scoring: FG(3)-FT=Total Points
Cameron Temple 3(1)-0=7; Brett Bell 4(2)-0=10; Zach Waldron 1-0=2; Luke Alexander 1-0=2; Landon Hall 2-2=6; Jake Terry 3-6=12. Totals 14(3)-8=39.
Score by Quarters
Haynesville (10-1, 3-1): 19-12-10-17=58
Cedar Creek (12-6, 2-2): 10-8-11-10=39
