Sonoraville basketball teams earn first-round byes
♦ Lady Phoenix head coach Stephanie Caudell captures 300th career win
Tuesday night was a special one for the Sonoraville High School girls basketball teams.
With both the girls and boys teams getting big road victories over Heritage in Ringgold to wrap up the 2022-23 regular season, both clubs go into this week’s Region 7-4A tournaments with first-round byes and automatic berths in the semi-finals at Georgia Highlands College in Rome.
And in the midst of both of those great team accomplishments, there was a true milestone reached by Sonoraville head girls basketball coach Stephanie Caudell, who secured her 300th career victory as a head coach with the Lady Phoenix’s 47-38 win over the Lady Generals.
Caudell has led the Phoenix to 20 or more wins in four of the past five seasons, including this year as they will take an amazing 21-4 record into the postseason.
And those four losses came to Pickens, North Murray, Northwest Whitfield, and Heritage by a combined total of 24 points and they avenged three of those losses with victories over Pickens, Northwest Whitfield, and Heritage the second time they played them. They only played North Murray once and that came in the Adairsville tournament back in December.
And it certainly seems a given that all four of those teams will be in the GHSA playoff field when they tip off across the state a week from this Tuesday evening.
And both Sonoraville teams appear to be flexing their muscles at just the right time with the girls running the table for a perfect 5-0 mark in the second half of Region play while the Phoenix boys, after losing their first two 7-4A games in January, have responded with seven wins in their last eight games.
The Heritage girls came into their game against Sonoraville in total control of its own fate, standing
8-1 in the region and a game in front of Sonorville, which entered the contest 7 — 2. But by night’s end, they were both 8-2 and in a three-way tie for first place with Northwest Whitfield, which smoked Central, 53-30, to also end at 8-2 with those three teams really dominating the landscape against Central, Southeast Whitfield, and Cedartown.
It does appear however, as of this writing, that the Phoenix will have the top seed going into the region playoffs and get an opening bye and Heritage will be the number two seed and also not have to play a first round game, which that means Northwest Whitfield will be the three seed in the league.
Central placed fourth in the Region at 4-6 and will likely play Southeast Whitfield County, which was fifth and looking to sweep sixth-place Cedartown Tuesday night.
As has been their calling card all season long, the Sonoraville girls got it done with defense, holding Heritage to just 38 points on the night.
During the 5-0 run they had to finish the regular season, Northwest Whitfield was the only team to get over 40 points in a game and that came last Friday night when they lost 56-44 to the Phoenix. And for the 25 game season, Sonoraville surrendered less than 800 points total, meaning the opposition averaged less than 32 points a game.
On the other side, with terrific scorers like senior forward Kayleigh Kelley, senior post Diane Smith, and shooters
EK Walraven and Brynley Walraven, the Phoenix have amassed nearly 1,400 points, which means they will be a tough out for anyone they play In the next couple of weeks, whether it’s a region tournament or the state playoffs.
On the boy side, the Phoenix finished strong Tuesday night with a rousing 61-60 victory over Heritage to end Region games with a 7-3 mark for second place behind the champ Central, which went 9-1 and will be the top seeded team heading into this week’s league playoffs.
Southeast Whitfield will be the third seed by virtue of its 6-4 region record and the Raiders will host the boys first-round games and take on number six Cedartown.
The 4-5 tournament matchup will have Heritage playing Northwest Whitfield after both those teams went 4-6 in the region and tied for 4th place.
After those two games are played, Sonoraville will take on the lowest seeded winner in the semifinals at Georgia Highlands College, needing two victories to earn the top seed and one victory to get to the finals.
Either way, a trip to the finals at the Region competition would assure them of being one of the top two teams in the 7-4A, meaning they would open the GHSA 4A playoffs the following week with a home game at The Furnace.
For the Phoenix, Tuesday night’s win was just the latest in a number of close games. In
fact, 11 of their last 14 games of the season were decided by 7 points or less. And the Phoenix were 6-5 in those games with one point victories over Heritage and Pickens and five-point wins over Adairsville and Cedartown.
All winter, the scoring has come from different people as the Firebirds have a number of guys who can fill it up in the scorebook. And if the Phoenix can continue to get that this week and then in the upcoming playoffs, it appears that have a chance to make a playoff run, especially if they can have the first couple of postseason games at home in The Furnace.
They are also a younger team with senior guards Ethan Hibberts and Brant Bryant
the only upperclassmen on the roster and Bryant comes off the bench, although he recently started a few games for the Firebirds when junior guard Jaxon Pete was out.
The team relies heavily on a solid group of juniors including guard Donovan McDaniel, shooting guard Jordan Storey, postman Bryson Shellnutt, and Pate and all of those guys have played very well coming down the stretch. Sophomore guard Elijah woods and junior forward Titus Smith are also getting their minutes as
the Phoenix are hoping their depth will help carry them through what will be some intense games ahead.
Central, Sonoraville and NW Whitfield the only teams in the league that finished above .500 for the season
Central closed with a sparkling 22-3 record as the regular season ended while Sonoraville was a very solid 18-7.
Northwest ended with a 1410 mark and after that, Southeast Whitfield was 1 -13 while Heritage went 9-14 and Cedartown was winless at 0-21.