FALKVILLE – Even in the summertime, victory can be sweet for a basketball team.
It was on Thursday for the West Point Warriors. In a two-game assignment of the Danville play-day series, the Warriors pulled out a 53-47 win in overtime against Elkmont, offsetting a 52-37 loss earlier in the day to East Limestone.
This was the second assignment for the Warriors in the month-long event, coordinated by Danville girls’ basketball coach Paul Wilson, now in its 12th season of existence.
West Point took part in three games on Tuesday at the beautiful facility on the campus of Hartselle High School.
Now on Thursday, the Warriors had a chance to evaluate their progress on the hardwood with a ball club that will have to replace three starters off last year's unit that finished second in Class 5A, Area 14 to Russellville.
Coach Randy Jones has good experience from the starting situation returning in sharpshooter Cameron Moore and forward Alex Hernandez plus guards Brandon Farley and Andrew Shaw who contributed in reserve roles from the previous season.
During the summer, Jones is working on getting a starting group together and also reserves who will be asked to provide the team strength in all phases of the game.
Facing East Limestone to begin the action, the Warriors were down 8-2 early then started to display a series of good moments and went on a 13-3 run and grabbed a 15-11 advantage late in the opening half.
But the rest of the stanza ended to the advantage of East Limestone. The Indians finished with a 13-2 spurt and held a 24-17 lead at the break.
The theme of this game was scoring runs. West Point fought back and had narrowed the deficit to 37-35 around the 6:00 mark.
East Limestone closed out on a 17-2 run and won by double figures. The run by the Indians was due to scoring off West Point turnovers.
West Point had a similar contest with Elkmont. The Warriors built an early lead only to see the Red Devils storm back and gain momentum when the half ended by the score of 24-21.
This game was back and forth in the second half with Elkmont getting the lead in the final minute of regulation.
Then with time winding down, the Warriors tied it from the foul line, sending the battle into an extra period even at 47-47.
The Warriors used good free throw shooting by Shaw in the OT to put away the Red Devils, keeping Elkmont scoreless in the extra 2:00.
Looking to put himself into a possible starting role for next year's team was Austin Dubberly, who will be a junior for the Warriors, coming off last season playing for the junior varsity.
Colton Sapp, Zach Shaw, Rylan Jones and Dante Callahan all made good contributions in the two games vs. Limestone County schools on Thursday.
Jones will have his Warriors back at Hartselle on Tuesday, heading to Priceville June 16 and an assignment back in Hartselle June 21, getting as many games in during the month as are allotted by the Alabama High School Athletic Association.
