Area high school basketball teams continue to play through the end of 2023 and a couple have already started region play.
The Statesboro Blue Devils swept Jenkins in their region opener with the girl’s winning 63-33 and the boy’s beat the Warriors 59-48.
For the Statesboro girl’s head coach Marty Holder was glad his team did not let up Friday and took care of business in their region opener.
“It’s always important to win your region games and I don’t care if we won by one point or 100 points,” Holder said. “We have a very tough and competitive region and so wins are tough to come by.”
The Blue Devils were paced by seniors Alyssa Staten and Reya Johnson. Staten came through with 22 points and 12 rebounds while Johnson had a triple-double with 10 points, 10 rebounds and 11 assists along with six steals as Statesboro improved to 7-1 on the season.
“Reya has always some through offensively, but she has become much more of a facilitator this year,” Holder said. “When defenses are keying on her and even double teaming her, she has done a much better job of finding the open player and getting them easy baskets. Alyssa continues to plie up the double-doubles and is a force on both ends of the court.”
For the boys the Blue Devils bounced back nicely from their lone loss of the season against Portal as they pulled out to a 14-point lead early in the second quarter and were able to maintain a double-digit lead for most of the game.
“I think our guys are a little tired but I was proud of the way they battled through and got a region win,” said coach Keith LeGree. “We have played three games in five days including that tough Portal game and they had moments where they played really well, and some moments when you could see they were tired. It’s important to be able to maintain our strength because our schedule will continue to be pretty demanding the rest of the year,”
Statesboro was led by Ja’Caiden Cone with 16 points while D.J. Brown added 14 points. The Blue Devils went on to beat East Laurens 60-44 Tuesday night in a boys only contest to improve to 7-1 on the season. Cone led the way with 15 points, Raylin Grant had 14 points and Mike Goodman added 10. Up next Statesboro’s boys play Savannah High on the 16th and the girls play Tattnall County on the 22nd.
The No. 2 ranked Portal boys remain unbeaten on the season at 7-0 after beating Evans 58-45 and then ran past Screven County 90-33. Joseph Thomas led the Panthers with 28 points while Elijah Coleman had 14 and David Thomas added 10. The girl’s lost to Evans 33-30 and then fell hard in Sylvania losing 71-21 to fall to 4-5. Up next the Panthers are at Bryan County Friday.
The Bulloch Academy girls won a pair of games Friday and Monday to improve to 4-2 as they knocked off Claxton 61-45 and then beat Trinity 60-38. The boys beat Claxton 48-32 and then lost to Trinity 64-47 and are 3-4 on the season. Emme Powell and Rylie Ann Claxton each had 18 points against Trinity. Jackson Sheppard had 18 and Will Ellis had 17 in the boy’s contest. Up next BA will host Mount de Sales Friday at 6:00.
The Southeast Bulloch boys are currently 4-3 and the Lady Yellow Jackets are 0-5. They will host Screven County Saturday with the girls’ game starting at 6 p.m.
