Monday, June 7 saw the start of high school basketball’s summer league in Augusta.
High schools from the Augusta area will compete twice each week at T. W. Josey High School.
The Hephzibah High School Rebels and the Josey High School Eagles were the first to compete in the summer league. The two teams played in the final game of the evening. The contest started with intense play as both schools battled back and forth.
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The fast play style displayed by both teams lead to a very wild first half. The two teams took quick shots and turned the ball over often but managed to stay close to each other in score.
Roughly halfway through the first period, Josey began to take a commanding lead. The Eagles managed to get two consecutive steals in the backcourt, which both lead to made three pointers.
The Rebels struggled to respond as Josey’s gnat-like defense forced more turnovers that led to easy buckets in transition. By the time the first half was over, the score was 32-21 in favor of the Eagles.
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The Hephzibah team was able to make some adjustments to its game at the half. The Rebels started the second period scoring seven unanswered points and cut Josey’s led to just four. From there, both teams returned to the quick and gritty style of play that they displayed in the first half.
Quick shots, reckless ball-handling and a massive number of turnovers led to a back-and-forth game with low scoring. With eight minutes left in the game, the Eagles switched to a zone defense and began to trap the ball when it went to the corners.
This zone defense proved to be the difference as Josey made three consecutive steals that all lead to wide open lay-ups on the other end of the court. With two minutes left in the game, Josey crept out to a double-digit lead and Hephzibah was unable to respond.
The game ended with a final score of 56-43 in favor of the Eagles.
After the game, Josey Head Coach Kelly Winstead told his team, “This was a good win, and y’all should be proud of that, but we have a lot of things we need to work on.”
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Winstead said the difference in the team’s performance came after some adjustments had been made.
“When we switched to our zone, it caught them off guard,” he said. “It’s something new that we haven’t worked on for long but clearly they weren’t ready for it.”
Overall, Winstead was happy with the way his team played but saw a lot that he wanted to correct.
“This is the first time that my team has played a full game together in months. We have a lot of new guys out there and naturally things didn’t go as smoothly as I would’ve liked. We took too many bad shots and we need to limit our turnovers but a lot of that will come once the boys get used to playing with each other,” Winstead said.
The remainder of the summer league schedule is found below:
Jack Johnson is a Sports Intern with the The Augusta Press. Reach him at JACJOHNSON@augusta.edu.
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