Film Session Lets Tiger Boys Bounce Back from Loss

Worth County boys' 53-49 loss to King City, the #6 seed, in the opening round, was disappointing for Coach Chris Healy. Having to play on back to back nights, Coach Healy kept his players Wednesday after school to watch film of the loss. Whatever was said during the film session must have worked because Worth County came out a totally different team and beat archrival Albany 50-33 to stave off elimination and advance to the consolation round of the Albany Tournament. As Healy said before the season started, the key to winning would be defense since the shots would not be falling yet. The Tigers couild not get shots to fall against King City, missing a ton of shots in the paint. The scoring was not much better against Albany, but the Tigers played much better defense as they held the Warriors to 33 points. Worth County was able to jump out to a 17-5 lead after one quarter; despite the referees allowing Albany to block shots and not allowing Worth County to block shots, Worth County made the lead stand up.

Worth County got off to a torrid shooting pace to start off with and then didn't allow Albany's big guns, 3-point shooter Kevin Paul or 6'4" Tyler Lupfer, to get going enough to get back in the game as they struggled with their shooting for the middle quarters. Finally, the Tigers got going enough to put the Warriors away in the fourth quarter.

Worth County scored the first ten points of the game as Bryce Ross hit a shot from the left wing, Alex Harmening and Todd Harding buried 3-pointers, and Harding added a putback for the Tigers. Consecutive steals from Bryce Ross and Alex Harmening pushed the lead to as much as 14-2, a lead that stood up until early in the second quarter. But when Harmening out with three fouls early in the second quarter, that seemed to slow the Tigers down. In the meantime, Worth County was struggling at the free throw line while Albany was making their free throws, which allowed them to cut the lead to 21-13 at the 2:17 mark.

The Albany fans were chanting, "Watch Bryce" every time he touched the ball, but Worth County had a lot more than Bryce as Todd Harding hit a 3-pointer from the left wing off a kickout from Jordan and added another layup off a fast break to make it 26-12 before Josh Sweat cut it to 26-14 at the break.

Kevin Paul tried to take over the game in the third quarter, getting a steal and drive as well as a 3-pointer to start off after only getting three points in the first half. But then Alex Harmening came back in to hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key and then Ross scored off an inbounds play from the high post despite the Albany fans yelling at the players to watch for Bryce on the play; Todd Harding fed him for a driving layup to make it 33-19. The Warriors began to come back, using a 6-0 run to cut the deficit to 33-25. But Ross would not let Albany come back as he hit a free throw and then jumped into the stands to deflect a pass and save it to a teammate, picked himself up, and then beat the Warrior defense down the court for a 3-point play to make it 37-25 after three.

The Warriors crept to within 38-28, but all of a sudden, Wyatt McClain took a charge on defense, which seemed to take all the aggression out of the Albany side while Worth County got enough shots to drop to pull away. With 5:15 left, Todd Harding made one shot and then missed the second and Jordan pulled away an offensive board from the much bigger Lupfer, who fouled him really hard. At that point, the hacking had gotten so blatant that the refs stopped the game and told the coaches to "clean up the play or someone's going to sit," something that would not have been necessary if they had stopped Albany's hacking right off the bat.

Jordan Harding made one out of two from the line, Bryce Ross knocked two free throws off a drive as the officials, to their credit, made good on their promise to clean up the game, Brian Hall made a shot over Lupfer, and Todd Harding scored off an Alex Harmening steal to cap the run with Worth County up 46-28 with 1:46 left. Grant Parman came off the bench to hit a free throw and Travis Troutwine came off the bench to hit a 3-pointer at the buzzer.

Despite the heated nature of the game between the archrivals, all was forgotten two nights later as several of the Albany players came over to the Worth County section as the boys were playing Polo for consolation and cheered them on.