Habersham Central High School’s varsity basketball teams split results with Shiloh High School in the first region games for both schools Wednesday night in Mt. Airy.
The girls walked away with a 53-43 victory, while the boys had their 11-game winning streak busted by the visiting Generals.
Girls: Habersham Central 53, Shiloh 43
“After the game, I went in there and wrote ‘1-0’ on the board,” HCHS Head Coach Bill Bradley said. “As long as you’re writing numbers on the left side, you’re happy, regardless of what it looks like or what it feels like.”
The Lady Raiders (4-8, 1-0 Region 8-AAAAAA) took a 14-9 lead in the first quarter and never relinquished it.
The Lady Generals (3-10, 0-1 8-AAAAAA) couldn’t get footing as the game carried on, but kept the game within reach as the two teams matched scoring in the second quarter.
Another five-point swing for HCHS in the third pushed the deficit to 10, which it would hold through the final quarter.
As has been the story since she returned from injury, Kyia Barrett led the Lady Raiders with 23 points on the night. She knocked down an impressive 8-of-10 free throw attempts en route to her big night.
Karah Dean hit three 3-pointers on her way to 11 points.
Dean, one of the many freshmen on the team getting important minutes, has come out of her shell as the season has gone on.
“Karah hitting that three right off the bat, just having the confidence to take that shot rather than thinking, ‘OK, I’ve got to get it back to Kyia,’” Bradley said. “Nothing bothers her. That’s the reason I like Karah so much.”
Bradley said he likens Dean to former player Kelsey Banks and he’s pushing his current freshman like he pushed Banks a few years back.
“When Kelsey was a ninth and 10th grader, I recognized something in her, but I needed her to find toughness. By the time she was a junior, she was getting that toughness. By the time she was a senior, she was mixinging it up just as well as anybody else even though she was the smallest person on the team,” Bradley said. “With Karah, I liken her to Kelsey because I’m asking her to go be tougher and not just be a shooter. Go find something you can help your team with.”
With the kind of game Dean had, Bradley thinks other teams in the region will have to take notice of her.
“After a game like this, everybody in the league will be talking about ‘You’ve got to go guard 21 over in that corner because she’s going to hit that shot,’” Bradley said.
The head man said he’s seeing progress in his youngsters from the beginning of the season, including limiting turnovers trying to just get the ball back to Barrett.
“I’m starting to see others that are willing to do things. I saw one turnover where we got the ball and were just ‘Where’s Kyia,’ and just throw it and turn it over,” Bradley said. “Just like Oaklee (Jackson) coming off the bench and putting that thing hard on the floor and shooting that runner and scoring. That’s a big, huge bucket. It’s the only bucket she got tonight because she didn’t get a lot of minutes, but that’s a big bucket. Just a young kid saying ‘I’ll go make a play.’
“The more of that that happens, the easier it’s going to get for Kyia because people have to guard other people,” he continued.
Now, the ladies deal with a quick turnaround as Gainesville High comes to town on Saturday evening for a second region matchup before almost a full week off.
“Another big ballgame,” Bradley said. “It sure would be nice to be 2-0 (in region play) going into that week (off).”
According to Bradley, the Lady Raiders can expect a similar opponent in Gainesville as they had Wednesday with Shiloh.
“Gainesville is athletic. I don’t think they have the same guard play they’ve had in the past,” he said. “They’re going to be a lot like Shiloh in the post – just big and strong and try to bully you.”
The way the schedule sets up for HCHS, it needs to win these home games in region play because they have five of six games at home before flipping to five of six on the road to close out the regular season.
“Those home games are really important because the end of the season you go five out of six on the road and that makes it tough,” Bradley said. “Hopefully by that time we’ll have our kids seasoned and they’ll be old veterans and we won’t talk about them being freshmen anymore.”
The Lady Raiders will tip off with Gainesville at 4 p.m. Saturday at HCHS in Mt. Airy.
Boys: Shiloh 77, Habersham Central 59
The Raiders (11-3, 0-1 8-AAAAAA) also held a five-point lead after the first quarter, but that lead flipped to a one-point deficit by the half at 33-32 in favor of the Generals (10-3, 1-0 8-AAAAAA).
The Generals led by 11 after the third quarter in which they scored 25 with Jullien Cole netting 16 of his team-high 25 points in the period.
The visitors outscored the Raiders 19-12 in the final quarter, pushing the deficit to the final 18-point spread.
Shiloh unleashed the sharp shooters as they knocked down 14 3-pointers throughout the contest.
Cole alone sank five shots from beyond the arc. Four of those were in that third-quarter run.
Tylis Jordan had 16 and Hady Diane had 11 for the Generals. Diane knocked down three from deep.
As a team, the Raiders hit eight 3-point shots.
HCHS was led by Josiah McCurry with 15 and Brannon Gaines with 10 on the night.
The Raiders and Red Elephants will tip following the completion of the girls contest on Saturday in Mt. Airy.
Postgame
Following their game, the Lady Raiders gathered to celebrate Barrett scoring her 1,000th point for the program against Athens Christian on Dec. 29.
“What an honor for her,” Bradley said. “I just think about the hours and hours and hours of work that goes into it. Not just the number of shots that it took in-game, I’m talking about the number of hours that I’ve personally spent with her in a gym that nobody knows about. At 6:30 in the morning and she, I and her mom or she, I and her stepdad are the only ones around. Knowing those hours, I know there are hours I wasn’t a part of.
“Just thinking about those hours and what that means and how it takes that to make that accomplishment. It takes a lot of teammates. It takes good teammates that are willing to let you shoot it some and to go get your own,” Bradley continued.
Barrett has 11 games left in the regular season to keep adding to her total as a Lady Raider before moving on to Anderson University next season.
