And the Titans did not exactly roll out the red carpet once the tipoff took place.
Coach Sylvester Patterson’s Titans jumped out to a huge lead and never looked back Tuesday night, shooting and dunking their way to a 104-63 win in their home opener at Albany State’s HPER Gymnasium.
“We came out with a lot of intensity and it was good for us,” said Patterson, whose team improved to 2-0.
Marcus Jackson had several dunks and finished with 19 points, which was the same total scored by ex-Monroe High School star Wilbur Lake. Truett O’Neal had 18, followed by ex-Monroe star Dejuan Shannon (13) and Ken Williams (12).
The Titans, who fell behind, 12-0, and trailed by the same margin at halftime in their opener at Wallace State on Saturday, made sure the same thing did not happen Tuesday. Albany Tech went on a
13-0 run and ended on an alley-oop dunk from Shannon to O’Neal just more than three minutes into the contest.
For Lake and Shannon, Tuesday was more than the season opener. It was a homecoming. Playing in front of friends, family and now-retired Monroe coach James Little, it took a while for Lake to get into a rhythm.
“I was a little nervous at first,” Lake said. “But after I made the first shot, I felt a lot more relaxed.”
He sank a free throw, and later in the first half scored nine consecutive points — all on 3-pointers. And when Lake tried for his fourth trey of the first half, he missed only to have teammate Waylon Jones score on the putback to give Albany Tech a comfortable 41-18 lead.
“Albany Tech is just more athletic than us and the players were kind of in awe at first,” said Moody coach Larry Jackson, who said his team arrived late because it had to wait for a couple of players to finish base exercises.
Moody Air Force Base had turnover troubles and relied mostly on Jason Beedle to keep the Albany Tech lead from growing any larger. He sank four 3-pointers and had 15 points in the first half alone to finish with 21.
With big a tournament at Northwest Florida State College (formerly Okaloosa-Walton) this weekend, however, Patterson still seemed a little disappointed with Tuesday’s effort.
“I think the players got caught up too much in the up-and-down play and not didn’t realize that we needed to work toward the next game instead,” Patterson said. “And I wanted our depth that came off the bench to have a better effort.”
On a bright note, concerning the depth, Jackson and Lake both came off the bench, as did Williams, combining for 50 points.
