Team Detail
Spartans shake off slow start to advance - Oconee Enterprise
Survive and advance. It doesn’t have to be easy or pretty. We’ve all heard the clichés when it comes to playoffs in any sport.
Athens Academy’s boys basketball team exhausted as many of those clichés as they possibly could on their way to a 44-35 win over Calvary Day that advanced the Spartans to the Class A Private Sweet 16.
The Spartans expected a tough, typical state playoff style game. They found themselves trailing at the end of the first two quarters and tied at the end of the third quarter.
“We expected a really good game plan from them and they brought it,” Spartans’ head coach Ed Wilson said. “They did some triangle and two which we knew they had. They did a good job on our shooters and they forced us to be kind a different kind of offense. I give them a lot of credit; they did a good job defensively on us. I thought we sped them up at times. I thought we turned them over enough to cause them some problems. We were happy about our defense but certainly our offense wasn’t perfect. We’ll get back to work on Monday and figure it all out.”
The Spartans found a way to outscore the Cavaliers 16-7 over the final eight minutes of the contest. Lawrence Jang finished the night with 14 points. Barrett McClanahan scored 11 points. Sophomore forwards Deion Colzie and Hugh Laughlin both put in seven points apiece.
The Spartans have had offensive outburst this season scoring as many as 73 points just last week. The Spartans have scorers capable of large scoring outbursts. Saturday, Wilson applauded his team’s defensive effort as the key to their first round win.
“If you go down and miss a bucket on offense, it’s terrible, but you’ve got to stop people,” Wilson said. “We talk about that all the time. We get more frustrated with kids at any moment on the defensive end. We take a lot of pride in our defense. We saw tonight that there were some lapses in the first quarter and in the second quarter and we cleaned it up. I was proud of those kids for that. We have to be a good defensive team. We’re not built to be a great offensive team. We don’t have enough of the great characteristics of a great offensive team.”
The Spartans’ next playoff game took place on Wednesday after The Oconee Enterprise’s deadline as the Spartans faced Savannah Country Day. Saturday’s win sent the Spartans to Savannah with a little pep in their step after a disappointing finish in last week’s Region 8A tournament.
Athens Academy
Athens Academy is an independent, co-educational school for students in K3 through 12th grade, located on a beautiful 152-acre campus in Northeast Georgia. For over 50 years, Athens Academy has pursued its mission of Excellence with Honor through academics, athletics, fine arts, and service and leadership.
