The Toe River Conference basketball season is heating up as boys and girls teams begin the push for a regular season title and position in the upcoming conference tournament to be hosted by Avery Middle School in December. Avery Middle School’s boys team is off to an unbeaten 4-0 start, with three conference victories and a non-conference win over neighboring Cloudland. On Monday night, November 8, the Panthers easily dispatched of the visiting East Yancey Panthers by a final score of 58-25.
Tre Jackson paced the host Panthers with 18 points, including five 3-point baskets. Kobe Pittman was the other Avery player in double-figures scoring with 10 points. Nine Avery players in all scored points in the Avery rout as the Panthers are poised to be the team to beat thus far this season.
“In the top six players, we have the most depth and skilled players that I’ve had in my four years of doing this. We are very balanced, and we don’t have to depend upon any one player,” Avery boys head coach Gordon Polsgrove said of his Panthers club. “We have good height inside with Dalton Tennant, who at 6’3” is tall for an eighth grader. He’s going be a good one if he keeps working and developing his skills. Kobe and Tre interchange at the 1 and 2 positions, and Austin Phillips plays the 3. We have a rotation at the 4 and 5 between Dalton, Dylan [Bauer], and James Stewart. With those six, we don’t get hurt with any changes to the lineup, and we have a couple of pretty good seventh graders that will see some action from time to time.”
The Avery Lady Panthers won their first two conference contests, a 27-15 win at Bowman and a 31-20 victory at Cane River. The team graduated a number of players from its conference championship squad from 2009, but a sextet of eighth graders in Kylie Polsgrove, Raina Wiseman, Jodi Poore, Alexandra Bare, Destiny Ollis and Christian Burleson return to anchor a team hungry for another title.
Avery dropped its first game of the year in its latest outing, falling in its home opener against East Yancey on Monday, November 8, falling by a final score of 34-7.
The Cranberry Middle School Wildcats started its season with a pair of losses against East Yancey and Bowman, but the team has turned its fortunes around with wins over non-conference foe Cloudland by a 36-27 final score and a narrow 40-38 victory at home against Cane River on November 3.
In Cranberry’s victory over Cloudland last week, Caleb Stansberry paced the Wildcats with 15 points, all scored in the second half. Morgan McKay reached double-figures with 10 points, with eight points from Tyler Pittman and seven from Zack Guinn.
Head coach Jimmy Tilley, who coaches both the boys and girls teams at Cranberry, has been impressed with his team’s improvement and effort, despite only five practices before playing the season-opening contest.
“It’s just the nature of the beast I guess. We had two days of tryouts, two days of practice, then had our first game, so the team hasn’t had a lot of practice time to work together,” Tilley said of his boys team. “I’ve seen a lot of growth in the few games we played, and they have shown discipline in our wins. I’m seeing some maturity develop, but it’s going to take some time.”
Cranberry’s returning leading scorer, eighth grader Bethany Burleson, led a balanced Lady Wildcat offensive attack with 13 points. Sierra Jones chipped in six points on three field goals, with four points from Emma Shell and two apiece from Abby Roberts, Elizabeth Pittman, and Paige Church.
The Lady Wildcats followed up its win over Cloudland with its first conference win of the season, an 18-16 triumph over the Cane River Lady Rebels in a low-scoring defensive affair.
Tilley relies on his veteran players to provide leadership to the club, while the team grows together as a group and continues to show improvement in the early going of the conference campaign.
“The girls are providing a lot of leadership, and all the girls are working hard to learn the system. Bethany, Brandy [Banner], and Sierra are bringing a lot of experience and discipline to our practice sessions and games,” Tilley said. “We’ve got some work to do, as we didn’t have a lot of practice early on. As with the boys team, I’m seeing growth and discipline from the girls as they improve and gain confidence. What I’m looking for early in the season is us getting better at running our offense and working our defense, especially our man-to-man defense. The girls have struggled with the man-to-man in the first couple of games, but it is slowly clicking with them, and learning it will help them both now and in the long run.”
Avery and Cranberry squared off in the first of their two scheduled meetings on Tuesday, November 9 at Cranberry Middle School. A report on boys and girls action from that contest can be found in next week’s edition of The Avery Journal-Times.
