Gators rip Warriors for Area tourney crown

By OANow Staff

Published: February 1, 2008

Tom Peavy
Staff Writer
PHENIX CITY — Lee-Scott’s boys led No. 1 Glenwood.

The only problem was it was just 2-0.

The rest of the night belonged to the Gators.

After LSA scored the first basket of the game, Glenwood hit an 11-1 run and never looked back.

By the end of the Warriors’ nightmarish visit to “The Swamp,” Glenwood was celebrating its fourth consecutive AISA 3A East Region 2, Area 2 title with a 79-45 victory.

The lopsided win and strong four quarters of play was a welcome site for Glenwood head coach Dusty Perdue.

“We watched the highlights of the state championship game last year,” Glenwood coach Dusty Perdue said about preparing his team. “We came out flat the past two ballgames and we needed something to pick us up.

“I wanted them to see the tradition we’ve built here.”

Coming off one of the best performances of the year in a 78-59 win over Macon-East on Thursday, LSA coach Chad Prewett had trouble finding the words to describe what was arguably one of the team’s worst showings.

“There’s no excuses — we just loss to the better team,” Prewett said. “We worried so much about Macon-East (Thursday night) that we didn’t prepare well for Glenwood.

“We didn’t make good adjustments and we saw tonight that Glenwood was just the better team — it wasn’t even close.”

The hot-shooting Kanden Blackmon played a big part in the Gators’ win.

Blackmon gave the Gators a 5-2 lead when he banked in a 3-pointer. From there, he proceeded to hit five 3s, including consecutive bombs on two different occasions.

“That’s one thing Kanden can do that many post players can’t,” Perdue said. “He can play inside or outside, and he has a good stroke. When he’s on, he’s hard to stop.

“I knew the shot that went in early off the backboard — when he hit that I knew it could be a good night and we just rolled from there.”

Rolling, to say the least.

Blackmon’s bank shot helped in the early 11-1 run.

Glenwood led, 20-10, at the end of the first and then hit a 10-4 run early in the second to lead, 30-14.

The Gators’ lead grew to 22 points in the second before Lee-Scott mounted a brief rally with 9 unanswered points.

But Glenwood squashed any hopes of a comeback with 11 consecutive points, and led, 65-35, at the end of three quarter.

Blackmon finished his night with a game-high 23 points. Scott Balkcum tacked on 12 more points as nine different players tallied at least 1 point.

Shane Corbett led LSA with 14 points, while Aaron Bethune and Josh Hundley each had 9.

Both teams will move on to the AISA 3A Elite Eight at Faulkner University in Montgomery on Feb. 8.

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