By Michael A. Lough

The Sports Report

centralgasports@gmail.com

Sights, sounds, and interview video to come around lunchtime

C.J. Howard knew.

And it hurt.

Slipping away was the dream, the redemption, the statement.

Huey Blalock fired off an off-balance 3-pointer, from about 28 feet with the shot clock dying, and Chase Dupree caught his arm.

Howard watched Blalock’s Rabun County teammates rush to pick up off the court, looked to the heavens in pain, and started rubbing his face.

Game stats book

He didn’t stop walking until he had covered about 60 percent of the court, stopping in the far corner, as far away from the nail in his team’s coffin as possible as Blalock took three free throws.

Less than 50 seconds later, misery became reality.

Boosted by an impressive throng from the northeast corner of the state, Rabun County had all the answers in breaking Southwest’s heart 52-43 Friday in front of another overflow crowd at the Macon Coliseum in the GHSA Class A/Division I state championship game.

For the second straight year under the same full-juiced-house circumstances, Southwest walked away a teary-eyed bridesmaid.

Conversations in the locker room were tough for Southwest head coach Monquencio Hardnett and his seniors, particularly Howard and Dupree, the foundation of Southwest’s resurgence as a statewide player after decades of mediocrity and worse.

“I’m super proud of them, and hopefully they’ll hold their heads up,” he said. “We played on the final day of the season. They can be proud of that.”

Hardnett was only seconds into his postgame gathering with the media that lasted nearly 10 minutes before unloading on the officiating, and particularly two calls.

He was somewhat vague on the calls, as unhappy with explanations as calls.

The first apparently came late in the second quarter of a tie game.

Rabun County’s Landan Bedingfield was open underneath and took in a pass. He turned to shoot and Southwest’s Jonathan Turley smacked it out of bounds.

Turley’s transaction was less than a second. He flexed his arms and shoulder slightly, and expressed himself briefly and not demonstratively.

Dupree immediately reached toward Turley to quiet him and then turned to an official hoping to prevent any action.

But a technical was called.

“They just scream human error,” said Hardnett, calm and firm during his postgame visit. “We're human too, but my player gets emotional and he gets a tech.

“I don’t care. I’m tired of it. They can call me whatever they want on the sideline. It was an atrocious call, and it turned the game today.

“It took a state championship from these young men.”

Blalock missed one of two shots, but made the Patriots pay on the ensuing possession. He missed an awkward trying-to-draw-a-foul 15-footer on the right wing, and tapped a no-look pass when the miss came to him, finding Hayes Free underneath for the score and a 22-19 lead.

Alas, the Patriots nevertheless went scoreless the final 3:16 of the second quarter and trailed 25-19 at halftime.

The second one apparently came with 5:32 left with the Patriots down 38-37. Southwest’s Alex Butts and Rabun County’s Reed Burrell chased a loose ball.

Butts dove to tip the ball ahead, and collided low with Burrell, who fell on top of him. Rather than be a no-call, since both were going for the loose ball and no advantage was gained, Butts was called for the foul.

Southwest was stunned and Hardnett furious. Butts pointed out that his arm was held – albeit slightly – as he tried to corral the loose ball at the free-throw line before it squirted up the court.

“One kid dives on the floor, like he's taught every single day to do,” Hardnett said. “Taps the ball to his teammate, and he calls a foul.

“I'm telling you, that was an atrocious call, when we were down by one point and you're ready to lay the ball up. I don’t care what anybody feels about it.”

There was no breakaway layup awaiting, though, with the pileup coming on the other side of halfcourt, and two Rabun County players matching up with Patriots, plus a slow-rolling ball.

Rabun County, however, did nothing with the possession, turning it over 15 seconds later. Octavius Raglin then had his shot blocked by Free, who missed the ensuing layup but had it put back by Bedingfield for a 40-37 lead with 4:49 left in the game.

Southwest at that point had scored on one of six possessions to open the fourth quarter, in which they scored only eight points and had a scoreless run of nearly three minutes.

The Patriots simply made it hard on themselves to pull out the win.

They were outshot 41.3-28.3 percent from the floor, with Howard unable to repeat any of his shooting magic of a year ago when he nailed 12 of 17, including 5 of 8 from 3-point range, for 31 points.

This time, he hit only 4 of 18 shots and missed all nine 3-pointers.

Dupree had a better game than last year when he managed 10 points on 4-of-12 shooting. His high school finale was a 20-point evening, hitting 7 of 18 from the floor but an uncharacteristic 2 of 7 from the line.

Relying on two players for 77 percent of the scoring usually makes winning more difficult. Butts had an off day with only four points on only four shots and a 2-for-6 game at the line.

“We locked in defensively,” Rabun County head coach David Adock said in an AccessWDUN story. “I told them if we could hold them under 50 points, we'd definitely win because I knew we were going to score more than 50, and we did.

“The ultimate thing was just finding a way to lock up defensively and get that win.”

Southwest dug an early hole it teased getting out of. The Patriots were down 17-5 after one, thanks to a 2-for-16 start from the floor, only nine percent.

And they didn’t close as needed, hitting only 20 percent in the fourth quarter, all the while connecting on only 16.7 percent of their 3-pointers.

“We were underdogs, we knew that coming in,” Blalock said in the AccessWDUN story. "But we came out and hit a couple shots, you know, that kind of got us going a little bit."

Hardnett did acknowledge Southwest’s issues.

“When you go 13 of 26 on the free-throw line, you lose by eight points …” he said. “You won’t beat a middle-school team doing that.

“We took too many bad shots in critical times. We didn’t do the small things. Rabun did, but we didn’t. They made all the right plays.”

Blalock basically was as advertised: dazzling.

The 5-10 Navy commit hit 29 points on 11 of 23 shooting, a pedestrian 2 of 6 on 3-pointers. He had rebounds and a game-high five assists with only three turnovers in 32 minutes.

“He was a great player,” Hardnett said. “Him and Chase were going back and fourth. Great player.”

Blalock made Rabun County’s similar scoring issue tolerable. Free had 12 points, meaning the duo accounted for 79 of the Wildcats’ points.

Dupree fouled out with 25 seconds left and headed to the bench frustrated and exasperated, and then had to be pulled from going straight to the locker room after the buzzer to participate in the handshake line, which he uneventfully did.

Hardnett’s challenge is again to convince the seniors and especially Dupree and Howard to avoid a funk.

`”This is my first senior class,” said Hardnett, who passed 100 wins last week. “It’s very difficult because they feel like they failed twice.

“I can’t ask anything else from them. They did all they could do. But it’s a really tough conversation because they feel like they failed.

“They lost a game today. That’s all.”