Things rolled on Thursday night at the Minden Holiday Classic, with the Minden Crimson Tide and Lakeside Warriors playing night games.
Here are the results from each team’s game.
Minden Crimson Tide
Playing their first game of the tournament in the nightcap in The Palace, the Minden Crimson Tider came out a bit sloppy, or maybe a little over-excited. Whatever the case, the Tide only held an eight-point halftime lead over the Doyline Panthers.
In the second half, Minden boys head coach Alan Shaw must have set things straight, because the Tide came out and played fantastic basketball on their way to a convincing 61-38 victory.
With the win, Minden takes their first step towards a defense of their tournament championship.
“I thought we played pretty sloppy, especially in the first half,” Shaw said. “We just really had no energy and were just kind of moving in slow motion. Doyline came out with a lot of energy and really played well while we struggled.”
The third quarter would swing the game to the Tide.
“The third quarter, we came out and really picked our pressure up,” Shaw said. “I thought we ran our offense a little better and we were able to blow it open.”
Minden subbed in its second tier in the fourth quarter in an effort to save some energy for Friday’s game, a rematch against a red-hot Red River team.
“If we don’t play with more energy and continuity tonight, Red River will beat us easily,” Shaw said. “This is a rematch of the finals of the Doyline tournament, which went down to the wire. I know Red River will be ready to play so we certainly need to bring our ‘A’ game.”
Minden and Red River will square off at The Palace, Friday at 8:50.
Lakeside Warriors
Lakeside came crashing down off the previous night’s win over Homer. Red River can do that to a team.
The Warriors and Bulldogs squared off at The Palace in front of a good crowd, but Lakeside had no answer for the Red River defense, a fullcourt, full game assault.
The Warriors went down, 71-44.
“We were well overmatched tonight,” Lakeside head coach Jason Gould said. “Athletically. Red River is long, fast; we were not really in shape to handle their speed. It’s just something that’s really hard to simulate in practice and it really put a shock on us.”
Lakeside’s offense sputtered against Red River’s full court man-to-man defense, scoring 11-11-12-10 by quarter.
“The second half was a little better for us,” Gould said. “We were able to slow it down a little bit and make it much more reasonable, but that first half they really shell-shocked us.”
Monty Willis led Lakeside with 15 points, Djimon lard had 8 points and Michael Bradford had six, as did Chris Brantley.