Bobcats’ week features both highs and lows
Former Lady Trojan named All-SoCon
the poll.
Junior shortstop J.J. Hamill (Chickamauga, Ga.) and sophomore catcher Amanda Beltran (Orange County, Calif.) were named to the preseason AllSoCon Second Team. This marks the first preseason honors for both student-athletes.
Hamill, a former All-State player at Gordon Lee, batted .222 with a homerun and five RBIs last season in limited action, playing 15 games while starting 10. All 10 starts were at the shortstop position as she completed the season with a .952 fielding percentage, notching 25 assists and 15 putouts in 42 chances.
Beltran is coming off a fantastic freshman campaign as the California product hit .322 with a team-high eight homeruns while adding 29 RBIs in 37 games played. She also led the team with a .644 slugging percentage and .435 on-base percentage. Those two percentages ranked her sixth and eighth, respectively, among the SoCon leaders.
Playing 10 games at first base and six games behind the dish, Beltran had a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage, completing 90 putouts and 7 assists in 97 chances. She also went 1-for-3 in catching stolen bases.
Candace Johnson, a redshirt junior outfielder from Furman, was tabbed the Preseason Player of the Year after hitting .380 with 15 homeruns and 36 RBIs a season ago.
Alicia Bazonski, a junior pitcher from UNCG, earned Preseason Pitcher of the Year honors as she went 19-9 in the circle and finished in the conference top-five in wins (19), ERA (2.93), opposing BA (.252) and innings pitched (181.1).
The Mocs open up the season in just over a week on Fri., Feb. 12, as they take on Morgan State and Liberty in a double-header as part of the NTC Tournament in Clermont, Fla. Season tickets are on sale now and can be found at the link above. Season tickets include both the Chattanooga Challenge and Frost Classic tournaments.
If there was any one word to describe the past week for the Georgia Northwestern Bobcats, “interesting” would certainly be near the top of the list.
The Bobcats snapped a two-game losing streak, started a twogame winning streak, saw said two-game winning streak halted, were held to their lowest point total all season long and set a new season mark for fewest points allowed – in the same game – and set a new season-high for points in a game, all in a span of just six days.
The final tally is that the Bobcats began the week with a 10-9 overall mark, headed into Monday’s contest against the Tennessee Wesleyan JV squad, details of which were unable to be included in this week’s edition.
It certainly won’t go down as the prettiest win of the season, but after two straight losses, any win could be considered a good one.
The Bobcats got out to a huge early lead and saw it completely disappear before they came back to score a victory over the visiting Flames last Tuesday at the Rossville Athletic Center.
The 45 points by the Flames were the fewest the Bobcats have allowed in a game this season, but it was also the fewest points scored by the Navy-and-Silver this year.
Daniel Parrish had 15 points to lead the way for the Bobcats, while he added six rebounds. Darrius Fugh scored 10 points and had a teamhigh eight boards, while Demonte Parker had seven points and seven rebounds.
Patrick Simmons scored nine on three 3-pointers and Alec Rattanaxay finished with eight points. The Bobcats shot just 33.3 percent on the night (18-of-54), but limited the Flames to just 25 percent shooting (18-of72) from the floor.
Ga. Northwestern 101, Bryan College (JV) 95
This past Thursday night in Dayton, Tenn., the Bobcats erased a four-point halftime deficit and cracked the century mark, but needed every point they could get to polish off a sweep of the Lions this season.
The 101 points were the most points the Bobcats have scored this season and the most points the Bobcats have scored in any game since a 98-87 win over LaGrange College (JV) on Nov. 17, 2015.
Bryan led 47-43 at intermission and the back-and-forth action would continue in the second half as the scoreboard lit up at a torrid pace.
Georgia Northwestern led 9690 when Bryan hit its eighth 3-pointer of the second half - and 17th of the game - to pull within three at 96-93 with 32 seconds left. But the Bobcats would win it at the line as Fugh, Parrish and Parker would go 5-of-6 at the charity stripe in the closing seconds to keep the Lions at bay.
Fugh had 29 points and 12 rebounds. Parrish had 21 points and eight assists. Parker went for 19 points and seven boards, while Simmons went 6-of-10 from behind the arc and finished with 18 points.
West Georgia Tech 89, Ga. Northwestern 86
The Bobcats led by one with 1:01 to play on Saturday, but the visiting Golden Knights would hearts in closing seconds as they left Rossville with a threepoint win, ending Georgia Northwestern’s modest two-game winning streak.
Georgia Northwestern led by six with 6:40 to go, but the Knights would reel off nine unanswered points to take their first lead of the game, 79-76, with 4:44 left to play.
The two former region foes would go back and forth over the next four minutes before Darius Floyd drained his third trey of the game to give his team an 86-85 lead with 61 seconds to go.
But Boyer immediately answered with his game-high 23rd and 24th points of the night and Parrish couldn’t connect on a turnaround jumper in the lane with 25 seconds to go, forcing the Bobcats to foul.
Bryan Foster would hit two free tosses to up the lead to three and that would be enough as Floyd’s potential game-tying 3-point attempt from the corner
bounced off the iron with two seconds left.
Fugh and Parrish had 21 points each for Georgia Northwestern and the duo combined for 12 rebounds. Simmons had 12 points on four 3-pointers, while Floyd had nine points.
Rattanaxay scored just four points, but collected four steals and dished out 10 assists.
The Bobcats play at Southern Crescent Tech on Monday, Feb. 13. in Griffin, Ga.