Boys prep basketball: Faith Christian flexes it muscle at the right time in run to NE Regional
Feb. 14—ANNISTON — In building a championship boys basketball team, Faith Christian coach Cory Hughes figured he needed to build a good schedule, too.
He wanted to challenge his players, so that when they had to face big, quick, talented teams in the postseason, they wouldn't bend.
The Class 1A, Area 8 champion Lions certainly didn't bend Tuesday night when they beat Area 10 runner-up Ragland 81-68 in a home sub-regional game. Next up, Faith Christian (20-11) will face Oakwood Adventist (14-6) in the Northeast Regional on Monday at either 4:30 or 7:30 p.m.
"We're already making out next year's schedule," Hughes said. "They may fire me when they see it. We're trying to play Plainview and Anniston early. There's a lot of basketball teams in the state of Alabama that know how to go to war. Faith Christian has not known how to go to war. We're learning about that in the game of basketball."
On Tuesday, there was a particular moment where the current Lions team showed it could go to war. With more than six minutes to play, Ragland went on a seven-point run to slice Faith Christian's lead to 60-58.
It was one of those moments where Faith Christian would respond or get eaten up by a Ragland comeback. Faith Christian responded.
Eighth-grader Conner Richerzhagen made a pair of 3-pointers, and Thomas Curlee followed with a 2-point basket. Yashua Arevalo contributed a basket, and Curlee dropped in two more baskets. Meanwhile, the Lions' defense cut off all paths to the basket, and before you knew it, Faith Christian led 74-60 with fewer than three minutes to play.
Ragland fought back with a 6-0 run, but Faith Christian's lead was too much to overcome.
"Hopefully, we're building a culture that when we get pushed on and we feel like we might be going under, our guys flex really hard on the defensive end," Highest said. "I saw that happening. I was liking how we stopped the bleeding there for a second, and it gave us some chances to hit some shots. I was really proud of that."
Curlee finished with a game-high 33 points to pace Faith Christian, including 21 in the first half. Richerzhagen added 23 points as he made seven of the 12 shots the Lions hit from 3-point range. They led the way in what Hughes called "one of our better offensive games of the year."
Arevalo pitched in 13 points, and Carson Harris came off the bench to score seven points.
But it was the defense that turned this one from a tight, down-to the-wire contest to a fairly routine final couple of minutes.
Asked about the defensive key for Faith Christian in that big fourth-quarter run, Curlee smiled and said, "We stopped playing lazy."
"We have this issue where we see a lead and fall back and let them come back into it, but we just played our game," Curlee said. "In the moments where we were pulling away, we were just playing the basketball we had been taught to play."
For Ragland (13-13), Jordan Turner posted 21 points, including 14 in the second half while splitting ball-handling duties with Brayden Collins. Tacorion Soles added 17 points, while Ezra Hill had 15 while making a trio of 3-pointers. Collins finished with eight.
"Ragland did not let it go easy," Hughes said. "I felt like we played good defense on them, but they played really good offense. They made a lot of tough shots. It's like what we tell our guys, 'Look, if we're going to get beat, we're going to make the other team beat us by making really tough shots.' Well, they did that. They made a lot of tough shots and kept it closer a lot longer than we wanted."
Senior Editor Mark Edwards: 256-235-3570. On Twitter: @MarkSportsStar.
