El Dorado to play for state title
Wildcats thump Pine Bluff 84-42
PEARCY - When El Dorado is hitting shots from the perimeter and playing championship caliber defense, the Wildcats may be unbeatable.
Ask Pine Bluff.
El Dorado connected on 10 3-pointers Saturday and thoroughly thrashed the Zebras 84-42 in the semifinals of the 6A State Tournament. The Wildcats will play either Jonesboro or Little Rock Hall in the championship game.
After the game, El Dorado coach Gary Simmons emerged from the locker room and shared a tearful hug with his son Tristan Simmons, who was a Wildcat senior two years ago.
“I tell you what, this group is a special group. They’ve handled some adversity this year,” Coach Simmons said. “Coming back together two weeks ago after losing Charles (Manning) in SIP. They stepped up. Instead of having Charles averaging 14 a game, we kind of went to four kids, B.J. and two or three other kids off the bench, Keshun, and they just upped their level of play. Ryu got hot tonight and Czar, being the unselfish player that he is, he just kept drawing defenders and kicking. They play together well. They’re good kids. They love each other. When it got time to slow it down, they fed Daniel. There’s not an unselfish bone in that whole dressing room. That’s why they’re going where they’re going.”
El Dorado hit its first five 3-point attempts to start the game. Ryu Unice drained three 3-pointers in the first quarter. His fourth 3-pointer came with 7:14 left in the second and gave the Wildcats a 28-3 lead.
“We tend to have great first quarters but not 5-for5 from the 3-point line. We hadn’t been shooting it well from the 3-point line lately. It’s just an amazing start,” said Simmons. “When the other kids got hot, Czar just kept penetrating, kept kicking, kept penetrating
and kept kicking. I think people around the state need to understand, he’s the best point guard in the state of Arkansas.”
El Dorado had a string of 21 unanswered points while holding Pine Bluff scoreless for more than five minutes. Unice fed Czar Perry for an alley-oop dunk and Daniel Gafford grabbed an offensive rebound, dunked and was fouled as the lead grew to 39-9 midway in the second.
Pine Bluff scored eight points in a row but Brendan Johnson’s 3-pointer at the buzzer gave the Wildcats a 44-17 halftime advantage.
The second half was more of the same. A 17-3 run pushed the lever to 62-22 on Unice’s lay-up with 3:24 left in the third. The cushion was 67-33 going into the fourth, which was played under the sportsmanship rule with a running clock.
Simmons was asked if he thought the team’s fast start on offense sort of demoralized Pine Bluff.
“That and the defense we played,” he said. “I think it confused them at first. We hoped it would. It looked like a match-up zone. But, fifty-pack is all we were doing. Fifty-pack for us is just a sunken-in man. It kept working and we just stayed in it.”
Unice scored 19 points, including five 3-pointers. Perry finished with 18 points and eight assists. Gafford scored 16 with 14 rebounds and nine blocked shots. Keshun Green tallied 12 with six boards and a pair of 3-pointers.
Simmons will head back to the state championship for the first time since leading Van Cove’s girls to back-to-back final appearances in the mid-90’s. The coach reminisced briefly and then offered a cryptic quote.
“That was way early. Maybe at the beginning and at the end, how about that?” he said.
When asked if he was hinting at something, “No, not that close. But, I’m getting kind of old, man. I’m getting on up there.”
Jonesboro knocked off Little Rock 56-47 in the other semifinal game on Saturday.