Jackets currently on 3-game win streak
♦ Senior Dylan Faulkner has back-to-back 31-point games to beat Rome, Cass
Don’t look now, but the Calhoun High School basketball team is on a three-game winning streak.
And senior Dylan Faulkner, after grabbing an amazing 31 rebounds Tuesday night against Cass is now the alltime leading rebounder in Calhoun High School.
But most importantly, the Yellow Jackets are sitting, along with Hiram and Dalton, atop the Region 7-5A standings following the initial night of league play Tuesday after all three of those teams collected victories.
The Jackets began last week with a hard-fought 64-59 road victory over 6A Rome before they tipped off the 7-5A part of their schedule Tuesday with a 62-56 road victory at Cass.
That win elevated them to 1-0 in the Region along with Hiram, which squashed Woodland, 75-23, and Dalton, which edged Cartersville, 51-49 as everybody went back at it Friday evening.
Calhoun remained in the Region Friday night against Woodland while Dalton was at Hiram in an early showdown of 1-0 teams and Cass was at Cartersville in a battle of teams trying to avoid an 0-2 start. (Details of those games were not available at press time).
The Yellow Jackets were scheduled to actually be pretty busy this week as they were scheduled to have their makeup game against the Darlington Academy on Thursday at The Hive. The teams were originally supposed to play on Tuesday, Jan. 3 but tornadoes warnings in the area canceled that meeting and the reset was scheduled for Thursday, when weather reports were saying another stormy afternoon was in the forecast. (Details of that Calhoun-Darlington game were unavailable at press time).
For Calhoun, they continue to be led by Faulkner, who had 31 points in the win over Rome and then had 31 points and 31 rebounds against Cass and has now gone over the 30-point barrier scoring-wise in six of his team’s first 14 games this season.
In the win over Rome, the game seemed to turn into a one-on-one match between Faulkner and Rome senior forward Cameron Keith, who matched the Calhoun 6-foot9 player point-for-point and finished the night with 30, or more than half, of his team’s points.
In fact it seemed that whichever player wound up being the high scorer between the two Division I prospects was going to decide which team won the game and that’s exactly what happened with Faulkner
notching 31 points and Calhoun getting the win.
After Faulkner, sophomore guard Jace Johns had a season-high 15 points and senior guard Caden Schild just missed reaching that mark, adding nine more in the victory with that trio notching 55 of their 64 markers.
Besides Keith, Rome had two players notch nine points apiece, meaning three players put in 48 of the Wolves’ 59.
On Tuesday night, the Yellow Jackets maintained their current streak when they needed it most, outscoring Cass, 2216, in the fourth quarter to break a tie after three periods of play and gather the Region win they were looking for.
The game was totally tight for three quarters, before the Jackets had their best offensive showing of the night in the last eight minutes to play to put away their hosts.
The teams were knotted after 14 after one quarter of play before Cass took a twopoint lead at halftime, 25-23, when the Colonels outscored the Yellow Jackets, 11-9, in
the second period.
But Calhoun would come out storming in the second half, finishing with a 39-point half as Faulkner, Jones, and Chattam just kept making shots.
The visitors edged out Cass, 17-15, in the third quarter to put the game at a 40-40 deadlock to begin the last period of play.
Faulkner had his second consecutive 31-point outing and Johns was in double figures for the third time in the team’s last four games with 12 points and Chattam ended the night with 10 more.
Faulkner continues to be a steady double-double for the Yellow Jackets, averaging 23 points and 15 rebounds a night through the team’s first 12 games.
He has scored 326 games and secured 211 rebounds in that span and also has 57 blocked shots, getting a little more than four of them per game.
Chattam is second in scoring average and is just a tick away from double figures, putting in 9.9 points per game while junior point guard Daniel Streete, who leads the team in assists and steals, is third at nearly seven points an outing.
The Yellow Jackets are now 8-6 on the season.