Grovetown topped Effingham County 68-50 at home Saturday to improve to 13-8 overall and 9-0 in Class 6A, Region 2 action. The defending state champion Warriors were led by senior FrankQuon Sherman (25 points), junior Derrion Reid (23) and senior Malik Ferguson (11).
With three regular season games remaining, No. 5 ranked Grovetown will aim to finish what has been a dominant run in which the Warriors have won their first nine region games by an average margin of 26.7 points. The team has clinched a state playoff bid already, and it can secure home court advantage for the coming region tournament by failing to stumble in the stretch run.
Saturday was senior night, so the school recognized veteran players like Malik Ferguson, a 6’4” guard who has signed with Georgia State, Markell Freeman, also a 6’4” guard who will play at junior college power Chipola College in Florida, and FrankQuon Sherman, a 6’6” senior who committed to Winthrop in the off season before changing his mind and reopening his recruitment.
After the game Douglas shared his thoughts about the kind of people who populate his elite program. Most have played for Grovetown since their freshman season and attended the feeder middle schools as well. Such a long track record is rare today when high school players transfer at least as frequently as those at the college level.
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“I’m just thankful that we seem to always have guys that love to be in the gym, that buy into the process and don’t listen to the hype,” Douglas said. “You know the area we live in. Everybody will hop into the kids’ ears and tells them they need to be here or be there. We’ve got guys that just kind of stuck and got with it. And it’s cool to see them be rewarded at the end of the four years. All of them will go to school somewhere and have a chance to play somewhere outside of high school. So that’s a great feeling.”
Douglas also provided feedback about the team’s fast pace on both ends of the court. Grovetown has averaged 75 points per game in region play while giving up less than 50 per outing. The team’s length – the starters range from 6’4” to 6’9” – is a potent weapon when combined with the athleticism of the players and Douglas’s swarming/trapping defensive scheme.
“You want to kind of have it go hand in hand,” Douglas explained. “We play so fast on offense. And it’s like a war of attrition when you play fast on defense as well, as far as speeding up the offense that you’re against. So it kind of just wears guys down.”
This fourth quarter sequence provides an illustration of Grovetown wearing Effingham County down on both ends of the court and creating easy back-to-back baskets for Reid and Sherman on the way to Saturday’s convincing victory.
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The Warriors will host Lakeside (15-8, 6-4) Tuesday before traveling to Brunswick (17-3, 9-1) Friday. Brunswick is the only team left in the region that can challenge Grovetown for a regular season region championship, which brings with it the privilege of hosting the region tournament the weekend of February 17.
Follow Chad Cook’s coverage of local sports on Facebook and Instagram at @AugustaPressSports, and on Twitter at @AugPressSports.
