RHS boys basketball starts season with win
By Brannon King / For the FCT
The 2017-18 varsity basketball season for the Russellville Golden Tigers tipped off recently in both boys and girls action.
Russellville traveled to Colbert County Monday night, and the boys team came away with a 62-55 win over the Indians while the RHS girls came up short by a 50-32 final.
Lucas McNutt and Devin Buckhalter led the way to victory for the Russellville boys in their season-opening win over the Indians. The duo had four three-pointers each, and McNutt finished as top scorer with 27 points, while Buckhalter had 20. The Golden Tigers led 37-25 at the half but struggled offensively in the third period. They only managed four points in the third quarter, while CCHS had 15 to pull within a point going into the fourth quarter. Russellville found success down the stretch at the free-throw line with 16 of their 21 fourth-quarter points coming at the charity stripe.
“I’m proud of our guys,” Russellville head coach Patrick Odom said. “It wasn’t necessarily pretty at times in the second half.”
Odom called the game a “typical season opener.”
“There was some sloppy play, and we didn’t shoot the ball very well,” he said. “We struggled to score a little bit in the third quarter, where they were able to come back and get back into the game.
“I’m proud of our guys for the character they showed. We had to persevere through some ugliness of the game and some mistakes that we made, but … Devin Buckhalter and Lucas McNutt, I thought they made the plays when we had to, and Calen Bragwell was real big on the glass for us tonight.”
Bragwell added nine points for Russellville, while Brooks Scott scored three, Chandler Dyas had two and Caden Parker added one.
Earlier in the evening, the Lady Golden Tigers played well to start the game against Colbert County but had trouble with the Indians’ defensive pressure. The two teams played evenly in the first quarter, but CCHS held a 28-19 led at the half and pulled away in the third and fourth quarters.
“I felt like we let some opportunities get away from us early on to convert plays, and I thought we got a little passive toward the end of the second quarter – but still, to be tied at the end of the first quarter and down nine, we were still in the basketball game,” head coach Corey Thomaston said. “We made some adjustments at the halftime, and they made some adjustments also and extended their pressure out a little bit. I thought we did a pretty good job of attacking in the second half; we just weren’t able to handle the basketball against the pressure in transition.
“We turned the ball over a lot of times tonight in our primary break, and those are things we’ve got to correct if we want to continue to move forward,” Thomaston added.
Madison Murray had the highest point total in the game for RHS with 11. She was followed by Treyvia Pruitt (9), Madison Hargett (4), Lexie Glass (4), Autumn Logan (2) and Jamie Hill (2).
The game against Colbert County was the second contest of the season for the girls. They fell 52-31 Saturday to Hartselle in the first game of the Danville Thanksgiving Tournament.
