ROAD WARRIORS
Heritage girls’ road record secures No. 1 seed in 7-AAAA
Winning games at home is important, but road victories can also play a big part in a team’s success.
Just ask the Heritage Lady Generals.
Although Heritage dropped its final regular season game at home to Sonoraville last Tuesday night, 47-38, the Lady Generals had already completed a 5-0 run in their five Region 7-AAAA road games this season.
And when all the dust settled late Tuesday night, that 5-0 record turned out to be the tiebreaker that gave Heritage the No. 1 seed in this week’s region tournament.
Heritage, Northwest Whitfield and Sonoraville all finished with identical 8-2 records in region play, but the Lady Generals earned a first-round bye with the tiebreaker, while the Lady Phoenix won a coin flip with the Lady Bruins for the No. 2 seed.
In last Tuesday’s game, Sonoraville jumped out to a 28-17 lead at halftime and never looked back as they avenged a home loss to the Lady Generals earlier this season.
Macie Collins and Kellie Boehm had nine points apiece with Boehm scoring hers on three 3-pointers. Lauren Mock had eight points, as did Tori Epps, while the scoring was rounded out with two points from Bailee Hollis and one point each from Reese Abercrombie and Bree Wilson.
Heritage (13-10 overall) was slated to take on the winner of the first-round game between No. 4 CentralCarroll and No. 5 Southeast Whitfield. The semifinal game will be played this Thursday night at 7 p.m. at Georgia Highlands College in Rome. The region final is set for Friday at 7, also at GHC, while the third-place game will be played at 4 p.m. that same afternoon.
By virtue of their bye to the semis, Heritage is assured of making the Class
AAAA state playoffs.
SONORAVILLE BOYS 61, HERITAGE 60
After a dramatic onepoint overtime victory over Southeast five nights earlier, the Generals came up on the losing end of a close game this time around.
Donovan Mcdaniel scored 10 of his 22 points in the first quarter for the Phoenix, who opened up a 2614 lead after the opening quarter. The visitors from Gordon County would go up 40-27 at halftime, but had to hang on in the second half.
The Generals came storming back, outscoring the Phoenix 33-21 over the last two quarters. However, they would end up one point short at the final horn.
Kaleb Gallman had 16
points for Heritage, who ended the regular season 9-14 overall and 4-6 in region play. Kaden Swope went for 13 points. J.C. Armour and Bryce Travillian both had 11, followed by seven from Kaleb Biddle and two by Gavin Broadrick.
The Generals were scheduled to open the region tournament on Tuesday of this week at 6 p. m. against Northwest Whitfield. The game was slated to be played at Southeast Whitfield with the winner moving on to the semifinals at GHC on Thursday at 8:30 p.m. against topseeded Central-carroll.
The winner of that game will be in the state tournament and will play in either the third-place game (5:30) or the title game (8:30) this Friday night in Rome.