Blake Branch/Press-Herald
DOYLINE – Thursday marked day two of the annual Doyline tournament with the Minden Crimson Tide and Lakeside Warriors both taking the court for first round games.
Part of what makes the Doyline tournament so exciting is the drama that comes with a single-elimination format and that was on display Thursday night for a packed house.
Here are the results from Thursday’s action.
Minden vs. Doyline
The Minden Crimson Tide avenged an ugly loss to Doyline in the Don Stahl tournament with a convincing 68-34 blowout of tournament host Doyline.
The Tide jumped on the Panthers from the opening tip, playing suffocating defense and knocking down shots from all over the floor.
A nightmare first quarter for Doyline was capped by a steal and breakaway dunk for Minden’s L’Jarius Sneed. After one quarter, Minden led Doyline, 22-2, and it never got much closer.
“I thought it was probably our best game of the year,” Minden head coach Alan Shaw said. “I thought our defense was really good especially, and I thought offensively we were better tonight, as well.”
Sakari Batton led the Tide with 16 points, while Davian Moore and Sneed finished with 13 points.
“It’s good to get that win,” Shaw said. “Doyline playing on their homecourt is always a tough game, but now we have to come back against a big, athletic North DeSoto team that will give us problems. If we play like we did tonight we’ll have a shot.”
Minden and North DeSoto will tip off tonight at 7:30.
Lakeside vs. North DeSoto
The best game of the night was between the Lakeside Warriors and North DeSoto Griffins.
The two teams battled it out for four quarters, which wasn’t enough to separate the two teams. In overtime, Lakeside had a four-point lead at one time, but North DeSoto came back to take the contest, 63-62.
The star of the night was the Warrior’s Jalen Gould who took over the game in the fourth quarter, willing Lakeside back from a seven-point deficit to send the game to OT.
In overtime, North DeSoto rebounded a Lakeside miss and drove the court looking for a shot to win the game.
A Griffin guard got the ball on the wing and pulled up for a desperation 3-pointer. The shot was no good, but the referee whistled a shooting foul with 0.5 seconds to play, sending North DeSoto to the line for three shots in a tie game.
The Griffins hit the first free throw and missed the second two, but Lakeside had no time to get off a shot and the game came to an end.
“The foul at the end of overtime is something the referees usually don’t call,” Lakeside head coach Jason Gould said.
Jalen Gould led all scorers with 26 points, followed by Michael Bradford with 10, Monty Willis had nine points and Djimon Lard finished with eight points.
Lakeside will play again Monday night at home against the Ringgold Redskins in a lead-up game to the Minden Holiday Classic.