Warriors season comes to an end at home
The Gordon Central basketball team had its season come to an end Monday night at home with a 6251 loss to Fannin County in the Region 7-2A tournament Play-In game.
The win gave Fannin County the sixth seed in the tournament, but it also meant the Rebels had to come right back and play on the road Tuesday night in an opening-round game.
And their season Tuesday night came to an end when they lost in Chatsworth to Murray County, which was the three-seed to finish the regular season and was waiting to see who they would face between Gordon Central and Fannin County.
That put Murray County against Model and then Rockmart against North Murray in 7-2A tournament Thursday night’s semifinals with the winners coming back Friday night to determine the league champion. (Details of those games were not available at press time).
For Gordon Central, Fannin County outscored the Warriors 42-26 in the second half to get the win after trailing by five points at halftime.
The Rebels also shot 32 free throws for the game while the home team had 14 and in fact, FC guard Jordan Richerson had more than the entire Gordon Central team with 15 free throws himself, including 13 attempts in the fourth quarter when the visitors pulled away at the end.
And in the last eight minutes., Richerson, who led all scorers with 19, netted 11 of those points on eight charity tosses and a 3-pointer.
Gordon Central actually made 19 baskets in the game while Fannin County had just 15, but the Rebels made 22 shots from the foul line while the Warriors were 7-of-14 at the line and that made a huge difference.
The game looked liked it would go the wire in the first quarter with both teams tied at 12 at the end of it.
GC senior guard Mac McDaniel, who was recently invited to play in the Northwest Georgia All-Star Classic, had five of his team’s dozen on a three and a made basket. Sophomore Amir Harrison had four more on a basket and two foul shots and Jamari George’s three closed out the scoring.
The Warriors topped FC, 13-8, in the second and would have a 25-20 lead at halftime.
George and Lucas Breier each made a three to lead the GC offense with five different players scoring in the quarter.
But the tide began to turn in the third when the Rebels began to heat up and scored 23 points while allowing 15 to grab a 43-40 lead to begin the fourth.
Three different players combined to make four 3-pointers and the Rebels were 5-of-5 at the line in the quarter.
Junior guard DJ Fleetwood had seven of GC’s 15 and George and senior post Seth Haygood had three apiece as George connected on another shot from long distance and Haygood made a close shot and a free throw.
In the fourth quarter, just two players scored for FC with Ben Bloch and Richerson combining to shoot 19 free throws in the period. At their end, Gordon Central was 2-for-4 at the stripe.
Harrison led a balanced Gordon Central attack in scoring with 12 points while McDaniel and George had 10 apiece and Fleetwood ended with nine.
Gordon Central closes the year with a 10-14 record and the Warriors were 3-10 in Region 7-2A.
Fannin County finished the season at 3-23 and the Rebels were 1-13 the Region.