Red Devils let season slip away
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| 5 | | The No. 2 Red Devils (20-5) took a 28-18 lead into halftime and extended it to 33-18 on a J.B. Stephens 3-pointer less than two minutes into the third quarter. After five straight points for fifth-ranked and No. 3 Paideia (20-7), Stephens nailed another trey to push it back out to 36-23 with about 4:25 remaining in the third.
The next three minutes, though, turned the lead and the momentum in the Pythons’ favor, with Keenan Palmore scoring 11 of his team’s points in a 16-2 run that turned the 13-point deficit into a 39-38 lead for Paideia.
“We called two or three timeouts there. We tried to change our defense. We let one guy basically kill us,” Bowdon coach Vic Coggins said. “We switched up our defense three times, and we just couldn’t get them slowed down there.”
In fact, including the next two Python buckets after that spurt, Palmore scored 13 points in a row for Paideia, as it took a 43-40 lead early in the fourth quarter.
“(Palmore) was just taking it to the basket. We couldn’t stop him. He could go both ways,” Red Devil senior forward Darious Moten said. “We weren’t even worried about him coming into the game because he hasn’t been scoring most of their points.”
Bowdon didn’t go away quietly, though, as Terell Thornton hit a layup to cut it to 43-42 and Stephens connected on a 3-pointer with 4:12 remaining to put the Red Devils up 45-43.
“We just kept pushing,” Moten said.
But before that pair of buckets Thornton had missed four free throws in a row — Bowdon’s only charity-stripe attempts of the night — that could have made it 44-43 in the Red Devils’ favor.
“We weathered the storm right there, and we fought back, gave ourselves a chance,” Coggins said. “We didn’t get to shoot many free throws, but had we made a couple of free throws right there, you know, we had a chance to take the lead.”
Bowdon went scoreless the rest of the night after Stephens’ go-ahead 3-pointer, though, while Brandon Pennington tied the game with a layup on the ensuing possession before Nigel Snipes’ layup with 2:26 to play made it 47-45 in the Pythons’ favor.
Paideia twice missed the front end of a 1-and-1 at the charity stripe to keep the Red Devils’ hopes alive down the stretch.
But Pennington’s steal with just less than 10 seconds remaining and his ensuing pair of free throws with 8.5 seconds left pushed it to 49-45, essentially punching Paideia’s ticket to the second round of the playoffs.
Moten, who scored all 10 of Bowdon’s first-quarter points, finished with 18 points and 16 rebounds in his final game, while Stephens (9 points), Paul Hammonds (7 points), Thornton (6 points) and Cedric Strickland (5 points) also had multiple baskets.
Palmore had a game-high 30 points — including 16 in the third quarter — and five rebounds to lead the Pythons.
And after such a solid first half, it was tough for Coggins to see his team fade away after the half.
“Played a great half of basketball,” Coggins said. “And then to play as poorly as we did for a stretch there in the second half, things fell apart for us.”
Even with a rough ending, Coggins took note of what a good season his group had.
“I’m so proud of these guys. We’ve come so far in four years. The seniors (are) a great group,” Coggins said. “We came from a real low point to having a very good season this year. We just thought we would be able to put together a better run here in this tournament.”
Moten saw it as a season where much was accomplished, even if it was not everything he and his teammates had hoped for.
“I had such great expectations for this year, and we achieved a lot of them, had our first 20-win season in 16 years, second in region,” Moten said.
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