Dougherty tops Lee County, Monroe falls to Macon County

AMERICUS — The battle between Lee County and Dougherty was the highlight of Day 2 in Americus at Sumter County High School’s summer basketball event. The summer version of the “Trojan War” was just about as intense as regular season games, even without some of each team’s starting players on the floor.

The Dougherty Trojans jumped out to a 14-2 lead early and led 21-12 at the half, but Lee County closed the gap to just 31-30 in the second half, due in part to the hot shooting of rising senior Brandon Blue. Blue scored 11 straight points for Lee County, including three straight three-pointers. But in the end, Dougherty pulled away for a 45-38 victory.

Dougherty was led by their trio of extremely talented guards, Ja’ion Burns, Juwuan Jinks, and Kaleke Singletary-Jinks,

Lee County’s Ousmane Kromah and Braylon Chaney were not in Americus Thursday but Coach Kirven Davis was pleased with his team.

“It was good to see the reserve guys get an opportunity to play heavy minutes,” Davis said.”In order to go deep into the playoffs you have to have depth and in my opinion, you create that during the summer.”

Lee County also dropped the first game of the day against host Sumter County. The Panthers topped the Trojans 48-40. The teams were really close early but a couple of late shots gave Sumter a 23-16 lead at the half and then the Panthers scored the first nine points of the second half to lead 32-16 early in the second half.

Dougherty played Tift County in their first game and the two teams played to a 23-23 tie at the half. A second half run led by Markelle Jones and Juwuan Jinks saw the Trojans push out to a 35-25 lead before the Blue Devils came back on a 15-2 run to close the gap to just 40-37. With the game tied at 44, Ja’ion Burns sealed the win for Dougherty with a three-point shot with 37 seconds to play for the 47-44 win.

Dougherty Head Coach Bakari Bryant is excited about what he sees for this coming season and what he saw in the two days at Sumter County.

“Due to the storm and cancellation of games from last week, these two days gave my guys an opportunity to rekindle the fire they had coming out of the Florida State camp.,” Bryant said. “The more we play the better we become as a team, brotherhood, and most of all a family. We played some solid teams in the past two days which allowed us to learn more about our players and for them to learn more about us,” Bryant continued. “I have a freshman guard that I feel will help us out this year and seeing him play with Burns, Markelle and the Jinks brothers gave me hope for the future at Dougherty High School. Plus my 6’3 football player Jaquavus Hallman many don’t know about will be a big help this year on our run to the state championship. We’re very excited and the buzz is a whole lot different than it has been in the past years,” the coach said.

Monroe was also in Americus but without leading scorer Justin Burns. Macon County hit a couple of quick threes to take an early lead but a three from freshman Elijah Rivers and then back-to-back threes from Lorenzo Still got the Tornadoes out of the hole and gave Monroe a 16-12 lead. The Golden Tornadoes led 32-26 at the break but pesky Macon County battled back and beat Monroe 53-51.

Joe WhitfieldJoeWhitfield[email protected]