Southland Academy boys, Deerfield-Windsor girls take top region seeds

ALBANY — The Southland Academy boys (19-4,9-1) and the Deerfield-Windsor girls (22-1, 10-0) won Tuesday night in the winner-take-all game for the top seeds in the region tournament set for Georgia Southwestern in Americus next week The Raiders of Southland knocked the Knights down to second place by a 56-41 final. The Lady Knights of Deerfield-Windsor remained unbeaten in the region and won their 17th straight game by a 42-30 final. Brackets for the region tournament are expected to be announced Wednesday.

The Southland boys hit four three-pointers in the first quarter, including a near half-court shot at the buzzer by Cedric Smith to take a 16-10 lead at the end of the first quarter. The Knights closed the gap to only three points at the half, but the Raiders scored the first seven points of the second half to build a 10-point lead early in the third quarter. The Raiders pushed out to a 13-point lead early in the fourth before Lane Sceals and Hays Revell hit three-pointers and Deerfield-Windsor trailed by only six points. The Raiders remained hot, however, and pulled away again while the Knights could not get their shots to fall into the basket.

The Raiders finished the night with 10 three-pointers compared to three for the Knights.

Jackson Harris scored 12 points to lead the Knights and Hays Revell followed with 10. Cedric Smith scored 19 points to lead the Raiders, Luje Exley knocked down 15, and Carlos Tyson added 10.

The Lady Knights got threes from Genevieve Lanier and Murphy Ray early in the game to start out with a 9-2 lead. However, the speedy Lady Raiders got hot and took the lead 14-13 midway through the second quarter before Ray ended the Lady Knight’s scoring drought with another three to give DWS the lead again. The teams battled closely through the second and third quarters but the Lady Knights led 34-29 heading into the fourth. Deerfield-Windsor held the Lady Raiders to just a single point in the final quarter and pushed their lead to 12 at the end.

For head coach Gina Mitchell it was the defense that stood out.

“They (Southland) are a really good shooting team but we were able to hold them to 31 points at their place and then we held them to 30 points tonight,” Mitchell said. “We’ve told our team to focus on the defense and the offense will be there. I think we did a pretty good job on that tonight but we just have to keep getting better.”

The Lady Knights used a very balanced scoring attack Tuesday night led by Ray with 13 points. Joi Hubbard scored eight points, while Laner, Margaret Sadler, and Gabrielle Harris each scored seven.