Albany-area basketball teams open state tournament play

ALBANY —The quest for a state championship continues for many south Georgia teams as the first round of the Georgia High School Association state tournament begins this weekend. A total of 13 public school teams in the area will embark on the journey starting Friday.

On the girls side, the Pelham Lady Hornets and Monroe Lady Tornadoes ended the regular season at the top. Pelham dominated Region 1-A the entire year and overcame a rocky start to defeat Terrell County in the region championship game.

The Monroe girls’ path wasn’t as easy, but they still avenged a late-season loss to Cook by defeating them in the region tournament championship game to earn home-court advantage.

Top-seeded Pelham earned a bye, while Monroe takes on Southeast Bulloch at home Friday at 6 p.m. Both teams pride themselves on defense and look to turn it up a notch in the postseason. Monroe coach Jennifer Acree said after the tournament win that even though her team is young, she expects them to continue giving the effort they gave in the region tournament and then some.

“We’re young in terms of the experience that we have in this latter part of the season, but we’re not young in talent,” she said. “We’re huge on talent and we were able to showcase that.”

She added that playing host is a huge bonus.

“We’re happy for that. We do better at home,” she said. “We don’t have to worry about all that traveling and that helps a whole lot.”

The Lady Greenwave of Terrell County and the Lady Trojans of Dougherty punched their playoff tickets. Terrell County will try and finish what they started last year, making it to the Class A public state title game. The Terrell County girls will play host to Greene County Friday.

The young Dougherty girls are coming into their own and hope they worked the kinks out in the region tournament. Their goal is to bring the first championship back to the city since their boys team did it in the late 1990s. They face Beach of Savannah Friday at 6:30 p.m. Friday.

Dougherty head coach Khadijah Ali said her team is going to be ready to face whatever challenges the tournament presents.

“We’re the Dougherty Trojans. We play whenever, wherever, however and against whoever they match us up against,” she said. “We’re gonna be ready to play and ready to give it our all.”

Region 1-A has a few other representatives in the Mitchell County and Calhoun County girls. The Lady Eagles will play host to Lanier County, while the Lady Cougars travel to face Hancock Central.

On the boys side, the Lee County Trojans got hot late and powered through their region tournament to be crowned champions. They’ll host Alcovy Saturday in the first round of Class AAAAAA.

The Calhoun County Cougars edged out Quitman County in a thriller to be crowned region champs for the second time in three years and earned a first round bye in Class A public.

In AAA, the Worth County Rams fell in an overtime thriller to Crisp County in the region tournament championship game but still earned a top seed. They’ll play host to Islands Friday night at 6 p.m.

The Rams had a series of late game defensive breakdowns that kept Crisp in the game and head coach Ron Mays said they’ll have to quickly shake it off and gear up for their next goal.

“I feel like we know we should’ve won that game, but the state playoffs is very important for us right now,” he said. “So I told them we’ve just got to go in right now and get ready for the state playoffs. We’ve got to get there mentally and be ready to play the best basketball we can play. We’re playing good basketball, we’ve just got to regroup.”

The city of Albany has three boys teams fighting to bring home a title and all will start on the road Saturday. Westover will take on Baldwin at 6 p.m., while Monroe faces Johnson-Savannah at 6 p.m.

The Albany High Indians have played a lot of basketball in the last few weeks as a result of the recent storms but showed no signs of fatigue early in their region tournament. They hope to extend their season just a few more games and start by facing Washington County at 5 p.m.

The Terrell County boys earned a spot and will visit Crawford County.