It was an action-packed weekend of basketball at Doyline High School.
The basketball marathon began Friday evening and continued all day Saturday into the late hours of the night. The Woodlawn Lady Knights defeated the Haynesville Lady Tors 58-27 to take the girls championship, while the C.E. Byrd Yellow Jackets bested the Lakeside Warriors 92-79 for the boys title.
Here’s a look at how our area teams performed over the weekend.
Lakeside vs. Doyline
In the first boys semi-final game, the Lakeside Warriors took care of business versus host Doyline, 71-39.
After a bizarre first quarter, Doyline led Lakeside 6-3.
“We started off just horrible,” Lakeside head coach Jason Gould said. “We couldn’t get any shots falling and it looked like our legs weren’t under us. We finally picked up our defense and started pressing them pretty hard and that got us into a flow.”
The Warriors outscored the Panthers 21-9 in the second quarter to break things open and then a 26-12 third quarter put the game out of reach.
Davian Whiting led the Warriors with 14 points. Monte Willis finished with 11 for the Warriors and Quatarus Solomon added 10.
Minden vs. Byrd
After taking care of Haughton in their first round game, the second boys semi-final game saw the Minden Crimson Tide take on Byrd, falling to the Yellow Jackets, 90-81.
“It was really a tale of two halves,” Tide head coach Alan Shaw said. “The first half we really played horrible. We looked like we were intimidated by Byrd. We let their pressure really get to us and were down at the half by 21.”
Shaw challenged his team to respond in the second half and they did.
“We really picked our game up on both ends,” Shaw said. “We limited our turnovers and hit some big shots. We actually cut the lead to 6 with about two minutes to go. Hopefully we can learn from this and take some positives into the Holiday Classic.”
Anfernee Red led the way for Minden with 20 points. L’Jarius Sneed finished with 16 for the Crimson Tide and Kevin Hamilton and Jay Beene both scored 14.
Lakeside vs. Byrd
In the championship game of the boys bracket the Warriors fell to a talented and deep Byrd squad, 92-79.
“It was a pretty good game,” Gould said. “My kids played hard and pretty well for the most part. Byrd just had a little too much fire-power for us.”
To Lakeside’s credit, Byrd never could put them away.
In the first quarter, Byrd jumped out to a 7 point lead at 25-18. The second quarter was a push, with Byrd winning that quarter 22-20.
The tale of the second half was similar, with lakeside hanging tough, but Byrd never letting up to take the tournament title.
“They only beat us by a couple of points each quarter,” Gould said. “We hung in there and didn’t back down.”
Leading the way for Lakeside in the loss was Jamarion Teal with 19 points. Jalen Gould had 15 points on five three-pointers. Quatarus Solomon added 11 points for the Warriors and Cody Simpson had 10.