Culleoka ready for region home game
CULLEOKA — After avenging a pair of regular-season sweeps during the early portion of their postseason play, Culleoka’s Warriors have put themselves in an admittedly unfamiliar position.
“We’ve never been a district champion,” senior guard Ethan Hardison said as his team, following its District 10-A boys basketball tournament title win over Mt. Pleasant, prepared for Saturday’s Region 5-A quarterfinal contest against visiting Jo Byrns. “It’s all new to everybody.
“It’s fun right now, but now everybody’s coming for us.”
Hardison and classmate Preston Bagsby had barely started school when Culleoka notched its last district title, in 2009. More recently, the Warriors have struggled to the point that last year was the first time the team had reached the district semifinals since 2013.
“We all know what we’ve always wanted,” Bagsby said this week. “We always wanted to make it, always wanted to win. But before coach (Mike) Lovett, we always went coach to coach to coach; we hadn’t had a real consistent coach. Ethan and I have played for him since we were sophomores. He’s put time into us and it’s really worked out.”
Coming from the No. 4 district tourney seed, Culleoka (15-10) turned the bracket upside down with its semifinal victory over Santa Fe before knocking off host Mt. Pleasant in the finals.
“We came in knowing we had to be ready to play a lot more aggressively than they did, or they were going to beat us like they did here,” Bagsby said, referring to Mt. Pleasant’s 76-38 win on the Warriors’ home floor in early January.
“We’ve got to have the same mindset going into Jo Byrns. We’ve got to come out and play hard, score and play good defense, try to build each other up and push each other to play hard.”
Although the fourth-seeded Red Devils are 6-17 on the season, they own District 9-A victories over third-seed McEwen and second-seed Houston County.
“It’s definitely going to be a fight,” said Lovett, who has Culleoka in the region tourney for the second straight year. “We hope to be able to compete with them.”
With Monday’s victory, though, the Warriors actually put themselves in a better position than they could have imagined — avoiding 9-A tourney titlist East Robertson, which advanced to the Class A state sectionals last year, and lining up a potential region semifinal against the Richland/Houston County winner.
“Jo Byrns is definitely going to be tough, but definitely not as tough as East Robertson,” Lovett said. “We actually beat both Houston County and Richland during the regular season, so it’s worked out really well for us to have the chance to move forward.”
And with only Bagsby and Hardison set to move on following this season, the Warriors could be setting a foundation for success beyond this year.
“We haven’t really even tapped into our sophomore bunch,” Lovett said. “They won the (Maury County) small-school championship as eighth-graders and were runner-up in Maury County. … They’ve experienced winning, just not on the high school level yet.
“We’ll lose two next year, but those sophomores will be juniors and this strong junior class (Landon Andrews, Cooper Parks and Chris Hutcherson) will be seniors. Theoretically, we hope not to take too much of a hit going down and hopefully will be moving up with some of those young guys stepping up for us.”
Before swinging their attention to next year, though, the Warriors are focusing on what should be an exciting Saturday night.
“We’ll have our fans here to support us,” Hardison said. “They’re all telling us they’re going to come. There’s a pep rally (Friday) for the girls and us. Folks are talking about tailgating Saturday before the game.”
“I’ve heard other coaches say we have the best student section they’ve seen, and I agree with them,” Bagsby said.