Jacksonville loses patience, game

Tedric Wolfe’s spectacular dunk to end the first half wound up being one of the few highlights the Jacksonville Red Devils enjoyed Saturday.

Memphis Central, buoyed by 14 points each from seniors Darius Thompson and Bradley Walker, scored the first seven points of the fourth quarter on its way to a 56-43 victory over the Red Devils in the Battle of the Border at North Little Rock High School.

Jacksonville (5-2) trailed 18-11 midway through the second quarter, but Wolfe helped spark a rally that was eventually capped with his high-flying dunk that came after a missed three-pointer and gave the Red Devils a 22-20 halftime advantage.

Jacksonville failed to take advantage of the momentum it had gained heading into the final two quarters.

“We followed that with two ill-advised shots,” Jacksonville Coach Victor Joyner said. “[Central] would run its offense for 45 or 50 seconds. They slowed it down, took the air out of ball. After a couple of possessions, that dunk was a distant memory.”

Central (5-3) made only 17 of 46 shots from the floor but it held a 35-30 advantage on the boards, including a 9-4 edge on the offensive end. Jacksonville was 14 of 39 from the floor but only 3 of 17 on three-point attempts.

Wolfe finished as Jacksonville’s leading scorer, collecting 15 points and six rebounds. Tyree Appleby and Laquawn Smith added nine points each. Smith finished as the Red Devils’ leading rebounder with seven.

Walker scored all 14 of his points and grabbed all seven of his rebounds in the second half.

Joyner said he wasn’t pleased with his team’s patience and that he has noticed it has been getting worse as the season has progressed.

“They were very patient,” Joyner said of Central. “They would make 15 or 20 passes. We would come down, one pass, two passes and then jack it. Every time we were patient and ran sets, we got easy shots or got to the free-throw line.

“We were just got too impatient with the ball.”

Jacksonville managed to hold the lead for most of the third quarter, but when Thompson hit a two-pointer in the closing seconds of the period it ignited a 9-0 run by the Warriors.

Central led 35-34 to start the fourth quarter. Jacksonville did not score in the fourth quarter until Appleby’s three-pointer at the 3:43 mark.

“We’ve gotten a little better defensively,” Joyner said. “We don’t have a big man. We don’t have any size. … For the most part, we kept them out of the lane. We didn’t give up a lot of drives.

“We’ve corrected what we’ve done wrong defensively. Now we’ve got to correct what’s wrong on the offensive end.”