The Portal Panthers were playing without point guard Elijah Coleman and lost their first game of the season 72-58 Saturday on the road at Vidalia. Wednesday night they took their frustration out on Savannah Classical Academy in their region opener with a 95-45 victory.
The Panthers were on fire from long range Wednesday night as they hit on 14-of-24 from behind the 3-point line. The starters sat out much of the fourth quarter, and while they could have broken the 100-point plateau head coach Jeff Brannen was content to sit on things at the end of the game and just walk away at 1-0 in region play.
“I have had that done to me and it is kind of embarrassing,” Brannen said. “We try to run this program with class and I just didn’t think it was necessary to score 100-points. We took open three pointers tonight because we did a great job of moving the ball around and finding the open man. We have struggled from outside the last couple weeks because we have been taking contested shots and it was good to see them get back to doing it the right way.”
Portal was led by Joseph Thomas whose 20 points included five 3-pointers. Brian McQueen came off the bench to score 17 points and also had five three-pointers. Brannen was happy with McQueen’s production as well as some other role players like K.J. Hunter who came through with nine points.
“The good thing about a game like this is we get a chance to play some of our younger guys,” Brannen said. “We are going to need our bench to come through for us and give our starters some rest. To have guys like Brian and K.J. step up and get some quality minutes in there with some of the starters is very important if we want to make a deep run in the state playoffs.”
Senior Amir Jackson had 11 points and 14 rebounds in the game. The 14 rebounds put him over 1,000 career points and over 1,000 career rebounds which has only happened one other time under head coach Jeff Brannen and that was Cameron Sheffied.
“Amir now joins Cam Sheffield as the only players I have had to score over 1,000 career points and collect over 1,000 rebounds,” Brannen said. “It is a testament to him that he takes as much pride in getting rebounds as he does scoring points. There are some games where his shot may not be falling, but he is always able to rebound the ball which is so important to our success.”
Portal improves to 12-1 overall and 1-0 in region play. Up next the Panthers travel to Montgomery County Friday night and then return home for a revenge game against Vidalia Saturday with the girls’ starting things off at 4 p.m.
