After ending the regular season on a sour note with back-to-back losses and a third-place finish in the Old School Basketball League, the Fort Benning Warriors returned to form Saturday with a dominant 81-66 win over the Yellow Jackets of Waverly Hall in the quarterfinals of the OSBL playoffs, but fell to the 76ers Monday 93-59 in the semifinals.
During the last two regular-season losses, the Warriors played with a thin bench, but against the Yellow Jackets, they had most of the team available Saturday to rotate players and keep fresh bodies on the floor, team captain James Johnson said. The Yellow Jackets, on the other hand, had just seven players to work with in the humid gym of Mother Mary’s Catholic School in Phenix City.
“There’s a lot of heat in here so we need those breaks,” Warriors forward Shawn Matthews said. “They didn’t have a lot of guys and we wore them down.”
Matthews, who finished that game with 18 points, was one of four Warriors to score in double figures in the quarterfinals. Michael Perkins led the team with 21 points, Solomon Loving had 18 points and Cedric Jones had 14 points.
“That just shows good ball distribution,” Johnson said. “It means they have to guard everybody. We played together as a team and we played smart basketball. We came out with intensity and kept that intensity the whole game.”
After trailing 11-9 early in the first half, the Warriors went on a 12-3 run to take the lead, which they never relinquished. As the Yellow Jackets pulled to within three points, the Warriors closed the first half with a 14-3 run.
The Warriors created turnovers in the second half, fueling a 66-46 lead with just under 10 minutes remaining. “We picked up our defense and that led to easy baskets on the other end,” Johnson said. “We stayed in man-to-man instead of going to a zone.”
The Yellow Jackets tried to fight back into the game with a 10-0 run but failed to take advantage of missed free throws by the Warriors, allowing second-chance points, which put the game out of reach.
“We slowed the game down,” Johnson said. “When they made that run, we realized we were rushing for nothing.”
On Monday, the Warriors came out energetic against the 76ers, but were taken out of their comfort zone by struggling with 3-point shooting and making careless turnovers. Defenesively, the Warriors had a difficult time defending the perimeter as most of the 76ers’ points came from 3-pointers.
“We gave up on effort,” Johnson said. “They got hot and went to the shooters. They were wide-open looks and we weren’t challenging them.”
Following the loss, the Warriors will play in a consolation game Thursday against Columbus for third place in the league. After the playoffs, the league will break for about three months and begin its fall season in October. A win on Thursday would mean the Warriors will have finished in third place for the fifth straight season.
