Parkers Chapel boys basketball coach Mark Young had almost no voice left at the end of Thursday’s 46-45 win over Ouachita. Fortunately, the Trojans heard his whispered, hoarse instructions in the final timeout and executed an out-of-bounds play, resulting in a layup by Colton Barnes with 15 seconds remaining.
PC came up with a steal on the defensive end to preserve the 2A 8 opening victory.
“I’ve been without a voice all through practice yesterday and all day today. I can’t hardly get a squeak out. It’s been tough,” said Young. “They probably played so good because they didn’t have to listen to me.”
The Trojans led 12-10 after one quarter and 26-24 at the half. The Warriors used a 9-0 run in the third and took a 40-35 advantage into the final quarter.
Eli McNabb’s three-point play cut the deficit to 45-44 with 1:07 left to play. The Trojans got a defensive stop and then, after a timeout, executed an inbounds play to Barnes for the go-ahead bucket.
“It’s a play we run. We just had to make sure we knew who we were screening because their defense had changed. It kind of gave us a different look to who we were screening. We had to set that thing up. I just wanted to talk it through,” said Young. “We’d already run it early in the game and scored. I thought we’d score again if we got the right guy screened and we did. It just worked out for us. Colton Barnes made a big shot and the pass from Eli to set it up. You have to set it up right. You have to make the right fakes and he did. I’m really proud of them for that.”
Barnes led the Trojans with 14 points. Ethan Mayweather scored 13.
Cameron Mattingly led Ouachita with 15 points while Judd Smith and Corbin Bahr each added 12.
“We’re trying to get something going here in a different way. Trying to re-establish the right culture, a winning culture,” said Young. “I told them after the game, you know winning’s hard. Losing is easy. It’s easy to lose. It’s easy to give up. Winning takes a little bit extra. You’ve got to do a few things right. You have to do a few things better and a few things longer. I thought our kids did that especially in the last three minutes of the game.
We did a good job throughout the game. And then we wilted a little bit when they changed their defense and went to a diamond-and-one to try to stop Ethan. It took us a little bit but once we realized what we wanted to do, we had several other kids step up and make plays. Eli McNabb made a couple big plays. Colton Barnes made a couple big plays. Big defensive plays on the other end, Landon Black getting a hand on that and keeping number 25 from catching the ball and getting a shot off.
“We had three straight stops. We were down and we scored and we came back down and we stopped them again. Came down and hit a free throw and then we stopped them again. Three straight stops at the end of a game - that’s what we call a kill. Three straight stops is a kill and that did it.”
Parkers Chapel won the seventh grade boys game 17-11 with Ethan Ruiz scoring 16 points.
The Trojans’ home game against Gurdon, scheduled for Friday, has been moved to Thursday, beginning with junior high girls at 5 p.m.