On the board

If the Dougherty High-Albany High city rivalry is all about bragging rights at Burger King, then everybody on the Dougherty side of the Flint River needs to do one thing: Buy a Whopper for Arabian Williams.

“Arabian. Arabian. That’s it. That was the difference,” said Albany boys basketball coach Archie Chatmon, whose team fell to Dougherty, 68-49, on Saturday night in a packed Albany gym.

It was Chatmon who earlier in the week talked about how intense this rivalry is, and how everybody from both neighborhoods often sees each other at the nearby Burger King.

Well, now Williams can have it his way.

And Saturday, he did.

“He did what a star does,” Chatmon said. “He took over. He didn’t even play in the first half, and then he takes over the game.”

Williams picked up two fouls in the first 90 seconds of the game and went to the bench. He didn’t come back until the start of the second half.

That still gave him plenty of time to drop in 17 points to finish the night with 20, and his 11-point third quarter lifted Dougherty to a 48-33 lead at the end of three. Williams, a diminutive point guard at 5-foot-9, even grabbed four rebounds in the third quarter.

Dougherty built the lead to 18 points (51-33) and Albany could get no closer than nine points the rest of the way. At one point in the second half, Chatmon was yelling at his top player to be more like Williams.

“You should be doing for your team what he’s doing for his team,” Chatmon said.

Williams never cooled off.

“I was hot,” Williams said. “I don’t want to brag, but when I am playing at my best — nobody can stop me.”

Williams said he probably would have been frustrated sitting out so much of the game if not for his teammates.

“It was pretty bad, pretty frustrating (when I picked up the two quick fouls), but when I went to the bench all my teammates told me ‘We’ve got your back’ ” Williams said. “We played like a team and they gave us the lead. That’s the difference between this year and last year. We are more of a team.”

It showed.

Derrell Anthony picked up the scoring slack, dropping eight of his 10 points in the second quarter, and Dougherty pulled ahead, 33-21, at halftime.

“I really thought it was a team effort,” Dougherty coach Donald Poole said.

And Williams?

“What can I say? I’ve had Arabian for four years,” Poole said. “He’s just an amazing player.”

Albany was led by Tim Pierce’s 16-point night. The Indians had won eight of 10 games before hitting the wall this weekend, losing a tough game to Mitchell County on Friday and then falling to Dougherty Saturday night.

Albany (11-8) had beaten Dougherty (7-8) earlier this season — so had Westover and Monroe.

But Williams, a Super 6er, and the Trojans finally beat a city rival — and they’ll two more chances this week. They play Monroe on Tuesday and Westover on Friday.

“Everybody said we couldn’t beat another city team,” Williams said. “Now we have. We just have to get ready for Monroe on Tuesday night.”