Carver girls fend off Opelika, boys take care of Tucker

Carver girls basketball coach Anson Hundley and boys coach Warren Beaulah welcomed tough tests to open their seasons Saturday. Though both their teams had to scrap for the majority of the games, both were able to walk off the court victorious.

The Carver boys and girls teams ended the Muscogee County School District Tip-off Classic on the right note, as the Lady Tigers took down Opelika 66-55 and the Tigers topped Tucker 75-63.

The Lady Tigers opened the evening’s play against the Lady Bulldogs in a showdown that remained tight going into the fourth quarter.

Carver entered the fourth trailing Opelika 48-45 but responded by dominating for the final quarter of play. Olivia Cochran and Jailyn Shaw were huge in the Lady Tigers’ 21-7 stretch to end the game, with Cochran scoring point after point and Shaw grabbing nearly every rebound opportunity she had.

In her first game at Carver, Cochran led the team with 22 points and also had 11 rebounds and three steals. Shaw, meanwhile, put up 23 rebounds and also had 9 points and a block.

“Opelika is a great team, and that’s why we wanted to play them,” Hundley said. “We wanted to see where we were at. They definitely took us all the way to the limit.”

The Lady Tigers came out on top in a scrap with an Opelika team that won 22 games last season, but there was still room for improvement.

Carver’s tight defensive play from a year ago is understandably a work-in-progress one game in, as there were several instances where an Opelika player merely got behind the press defense for easy points. Emotions also ran high at one point and led to a technical foul, which gave Opelika a chance to close the gap in the fourth.

Still, Hundley understands that the victory is one that can propel the team in the early stages of a new season.

“I’m proud of the girls for just fighting and figuring out what they needed to do to pull out a win,” Hundley said. “It’s a good win to take us forward and hopefully continue our goal of being a better team than we were last year.”

The Tigers, meanwhile, were learning on the fly against Tucker. Carver couldn’t keep up pace in the first quarter -- which ended with Tucker leading 19-8 -- before firing on all cylinders in the second. Devin Flowers’ traditional 3-point play in the final seconds left the halftime deficit at 37-33, which to Beaulah put the team right where it needed to be.

“We went in the locker room down four points, and I think that was the key to the game,” Beaulah said. “I thought it was going to get away, and they scrapped and fought.”

Carver took the lead from Tucker in the third quarter and did everything it could to hold onto it, though a Tucker buzzer-beating 3-pointer left the Tigers’ lead at two points entering the fourth. From there, however, Carver begin another flurry of scoring made possible by A.J. Watts and Xaiyhir Jacobs. Their efforts were crucial in the Tigers’ sealing their first win in the 2017-2018 season.

Watts led Carver with 22 points and had four rebounds as well. Jacobs registered a team-high eight rebounds and had 14 points to boot.

“It’s the same old A.J. from last year. We just expect him to be the A.J. from last year but better,” Beaulah said. “I was very proud of Xai Jacobs, too. The quarterback played good basketball tonight.”

Beaulah explained his team is still waiting on some important pieces to re-join the team, but overall he was happy with how the group fought Saturday. Like Hundley, Beaulah understood the value in facing a high-quality opponent and felt his team passed the eye test.

“Like I told them before the game, I thought we probably got the primary draw of the best teams in this classic,” Beaulah said. “It’s part of growing, and we don’t shy away from good competition. The only thing it does is make you better later in the year. They showed me we are probably going to be a pretty good team again.”

This story was originally published November 19, 2017 at 9:24 AM with the headline "Carver girls fend off Opelika, boys take care of Tucker."