Marcus Price, nor Laurel, seemed ready for South Jones in Tuesday night’s Region 5-5A basketball opener.
“Hat’s off to South Jones,” said Price. “That was the best game I’ve seen them play since I’ve been coaching here at Laurel. They shot the ball well and were organized in the right spots. They were ready for the different presses we ran in the past. We had to use some of our newer stuff we were hoping to save just to get the win.”
After trading three’s to start the game, South Jones jumped out in front and held on till the 1:26 mark in the third quarter. Laurel outscored South Jones 23-14 in the final period to win Tuesday night’s Region 5-5A opener, 72-62.
“We came out sloppy,” Price said after the game. “We had some guys that were late for practice and some who missed practice earlier in the week, so I had to penalize them. So we didn’t have our normal rotation in to start the game and it kind of hurt us. Once we got back into our rotation, we started to chop down South Jones’ lead. But hats off to them because they played one heck of a game.”
South Jones had leads of nine, eight and seven at different points in the contest. Laurel closed the gap late in the third period on an 11-4 scoring run that lasted nearly three minutes. Back-to-back baskets by Jalon Ferguson gave Laurel a 47-46 lead at the 1:22 mark in the third quarter. Ferguson finished the game with a team-high 19 points.
“We had to get back to the ‘Tornado Standard,'” said Price. “We had to get back to doing the little things right. That is the thing with this team, coming into this year we didn’t have anyone who played valuable minutes last year. So at this point, we’re still learning. This was this group of guys first district game, and as we go through the process it won’t always be pretty, but hopefully, we can do the things we need to do to try and get the wins.”
Eleven Laurel players scored baskets in the win.
“That is what we want to do,” added Price. “When people look at our scouting report we don’t want them to be able to look at just one guy and say if we can take this guy away we got them.
“We want to be a unit and a family, and a group that is evenly disbursed. Now we may have a few guys that have a little more points than others depending on where they are on the floor, but if we play good team defense and share the ball, then the points will be evenly distributed.”
Along with Ferguson, Jontarious Henderson and Austin Lindsey finished in double-digits with 12 apiece.
Andre Thomas led South Jones with a game-high 20 points. Corey Fulford and Jamichael Morgan scored in double-digits too with 16 and 12 points, respectively.
Laurel improves to 9-3 on the season and 1-0 in Region 5-5A.
South Jones falls to 2-14, and 0-1 in region play.
