Titans fight hard, earn tourney win

JACKSONVILLE 49, MALVERN 43

SHERIDAN – The training regimen for Jacksonville hasn’t exactly been ideal this season, but it’s been effective enough that’s it’s starting to give head coach Victor Joyner a reason to be optimistic.

The Titans fought back from an eight-point, halftime deficit to take down Malvern 49-43 in the first round of the Sheridan Invitational on Tuesday afternoon at Yellowjacket Arena.

Jayden Jones scored 17 points and hauled in seven rebounds for Jacksonville (26), which put an end to a fivegame winning streak by staging a second-half rally against a Malvern team that held the lead for nearly the entire first half.

The Leopards led 24-16 after two quarters, thanks in part to Jacoby Lock’s 13-point half, but Jacksonville scored the first eight points of the third quarter, with Jones finishing off the surge with a dunk, to erase that deficit completely. However, Joyner has seen his team waste those types of surges before so he wasn’t about to get his hopes up, especially when dealing with a young group.

“We’ve had good teams down 14, 15 points this year,” Joyner explained. “I’m talking about some really, really good teams, and we lost those games within the last three minutes just off decision-making. We basically have one kid that saw any real playing time last year.

“Really, it’s the JV squad from this past season because we had so many seniors the past three years. These guys didn’t get a lot of run, and it’s taken them some games to try figure things out. It’s kind of like on-the-job training. … they make so many mistakes, and that’s why they have good and bad moments. And to me, this is the hardest game in the world to have that kind of training because you stick out like a sore thumb.”

Jacksonville shot 7 of 26 (26.9%) in the first half, including only 3 of 13 (23.1%) in the second quarter when the Leopards opened things up.

Malvern (2-7) weathered the Titans’ rush in the third and led 33-30 with 6:31 left in the fourth when Dyelon Caradine hit a three-pointer just as the shot clock expired. Jacksonville responded by reeling off the next 10 points – five each from Jones and Sherman Flowers.

The Leopards later clawed within 43-40 after another three from Caradine with 39 seconds remaining. The Titans, though, scored on the ensuing inbounds when Corlionn Hardy retrieved a pass after getting behind Malvern defenders for an easy lay-up to stabilize their lead.

Lawrence Scott finished with 10 points and Flowers had all nine of his points in the second half for Jacksonville, which finished 18 of 50 (36%) for the game.

Lock had 20 points and Tyler Francis ended with nine points for Malvern. The Leopards were 17 of 43 (39.5%) from the field.