MURFREESBORO, Tenn. – The Red Bank Lions had an awesome basketball season where they won 28 games while winning district and region tournament championships.
They had high expectations for their first appearance at the Bluecross Basketball Championships in 15 years, but those hopes never materialized as they picked the absolute worst day of the year to play their worst game.
Red Bank’s season ends at 28-8 following a 50-34 loss to the Creek Wood Red Hawks here at MTSU’s Murphy Center Thursday evening in the first quarterfinal game for AAA teams.
Red Bank coach Nick Fike for sure hated to see his team’s season come to an end on such a disappointing note, but he will always be grateful to his kids for the hard work and effort they put forth to get to this point.
“The shots just weren’t falling as we had plenty of opportunities,” Fike said in the post-game media room.
“Basketball is a crazy sport where there are times you have bad games. Too bad it was that day for us today. I thought we had good game plan and we made some adjustments at the half, but Creek Wood just kept hitting shots and we were never able to get our pressure defense untracked.
“Creek Wood played really well today, so it’s unfortunate that things turned out the way they did for us. We had too many scoring droughts and that seemed to be the story of the game, but it’s hard to beat anybody when you shoot as poorly as we did.
“But I’m really proud of these guys and all the work they put in as they made a lot of good things happen. What hurts the most is this group won’t be spending any time together again, but we’ll hang district and region banners in our gym and that’s something we can all be proud of in the years to come,” he added.
Charles Taylor has been the Creek Wood coach for the past 22 years. The Red Hawks made school history by winning their first region title and it was made again on Thursday when they won their first game at the state tournament.
“We faced a lot of teams who played similar styles like Red Bank, so we spent a lot of time working on how to attack their press. But tonight was all about communicating with each other and finding the open shooter and I think we did a good job of both,” he said with a smile on his face.
“I thought we did a good job of handling our emotions early and also Red Bank’s pressure. I thought our shot selection was good for the most part, but I’m sure we can play better.
“And I can’t say enough about our crowd support tonight as they were just outstanding. They were all out cheering on the side of the road when we left town tonight ad their support was just something we built off of in this game,” he added.
Greyson Walker and Carter Thomason scored the game’s first two buckets for a 4-0 Creek Wood lead in the first minute.
Red Bank then went on a 12-3 run to build a 12-7 lead following a layup by Jaylen Rice with 35 seconds left in the opening quarter. The difference was 12-9 at the first break.
Malik Rizer scored four straight points to start the second stanza as Red Bank had its biggest lead at 16-9 with 6:13 left in the half, but the Red Hawks then caught fire and scored 10 of the last 12 points the rest of the half for a 19-18 lead at the break.
Kendrick Lloyd scored on a layup to start the second half for a 20-19 Red Bank lead, but the Lions never led again as Creek Wood scored the next five points and just slowly pulled away as Red Bank’s shooting woes just continued into the second half.
It was still anybody’s game as Creek Wood still had the lead at 29-27 when the third quarter ended, but an 18-4 run over the next four and a half minutes gave the Red Hawks their biggest lead of the game at 47-30 following a three-point play by Alex Bradshaw with 3:27 to play.
Red Bank then scored four straight points to make it a little bit closer at 47-34, but the hole was simply too deep for the Lions to make any further comeback.
Jamison Ford scored 14 points to lead the Red Hawks while Thomason and Bradshaw were also in double figures with 11 and 10 points, respectively.
Lloyd was the only Red Bank player in double figures as he finished with 10. Leading scorer Anthony Bonner was limited to just five points.
Creek Wood made 17 of 40 field goals for 42.5 percent and three of 11 from long range for 27.3 percent. The Red Hawks also made 13 of 16 free throws for 81.3 percent.
Red Bank, on the other hand, sank just 12 of 43 field goals for 27.9 percent and just two of 12 from long range for 16.7 percent. Free throw shooting wasn’t much better as the Lions made just eight of 20 for a cool 40 percent.
About the only positive for Red Bank was a 33-26 edge in rebounds as Lloyd had eight.
Creek Wood is now 23-8 for the season and will face Ridgeway in Friday’s first AAA semifinal game.
RED BANK 12 6 9 7 -- 34
CREEK WOOD 9 10 10 21 -- 50
RED BANK (34) – Bonner 5, Rice 8, Johnson 5, Kendrick Lloyd 10, Rizer 5, Collier, Stewart, Crutcher 1, Owens, Wilbur.
CREEK WOOD (50) – Jamison Ford 14, Carter Thomason 11, Edmondson 4, Howard, Walker 5, Alex Bradshaw 10, Fort 2, Henderson 4.
3-Point Goals: Red Bank 2 of 12 (Johnson, Lloyd); Creek Wood 3 of 11 (Thomason, Walker, Bradshaw).
(Email John Hunt at nomarathonmoose@gmail.com)