Worth County's boys won a rematch with South Nodaway 45-30 and advanced to the finals of the Northeast Nodaway Junior High Tournament Wednesday night. The focus of the game was to limit the output of Longhorn standout Taylar Freemyer and force someone else to beat them. They finally shut him down and pulled away late in the first half. After beating Jefferson in another rematch game, 48-16, the win gave the Tigers a ticket to the championship round against likely opponent Maryville.
There were five ties and two lead changes in the first first nine minutes of the game before Bryant McCord hit a shot in the high post following a pass from Caleb Parman to spark an 8-0 run for Worth County to end the half after South Nodaway had tied it at 18. Caleb only had 2 points for the game, but facilitated the Tiger offense by passing the ball around to everyone else; he had a game-high 7 assists. "Assists are more important than points," he said. Bryant, who had been hovering just below double digits for the Tigers, got a career high with 10 for the game.
Issac Alarcon followed by jumping a pass and getting a layup and then Caleb hit him with a backdoor layup; Issac closed with a putback with 16 seconds left. Issac had his usual output, getting 19 points; the focus of the Longhorn defense was to help out and shut him down, but it didn't matter since Caleb and everyone else was getting him the ball down low.
South Nodaway made an adjustment and moved Freemyer from the post position to the wing, where he would have more chances to get open. It worked for a while as he was able to stop the bleeding during much of the second half. But then South Nodaway went to their half court trap with under four minutes left as they needed the ball back down eight. Worth County, however, was able to get loose thanks to the passing of Caleb Parman, who had three of his assists in the fourth quarter as the Tigers scored nine straight points to pull away. The object of a trapping defense is to speed the other team up; however, Worth County responded perfectly and slowed the ball down and found plenty of good transition looks as a result.
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