The Russellville High School varsity girls’ and boys’ basketball teams were both defeated at home at the hands of Austin High School on Monday night. The Class 7A Black Bears ran away with a wide margin of victory in each contest, dropping the Lady Golden Tigers to 2-4 and the Golden Tigers to 2-1 this season.
The RHS girls’ basketball team started the evening at the Russellville Middle School gymnasium with a 64-34 defeat. The visiting Lady Black Bears controlled the game from start to finish, outscoring the Lady Golden Tigers in every period.
“One thing we can’t replicate in practice is the speed of Austin’s team,” Russellville head coach Jermaine Groce said after the game. “We struggle a lot with halfcourt pressure—when somebody’s super aggressive in the halfcourt and pushes us out of our offense, and that happened a lot tonight.
“We knew they were gonna be super aggressive and that they were gonna get out in transition, so offensively we were trying to see if we could initiate our offense more effectively. We struggled, it didn’t work well, we didn’t hit a lot of shots,” Groce added. “Defensively we were also trying to figure out how we can take away transition points and easy baskets for them—we didn’t accomplish that either. That gives us two things to work on continuously.”
Although the defeat was heavy-handed, Groce is optimistic tough, non-area games like the one against Austin Monday night will serve as a learning opportunity and help prepare his young squad for the contests that count for much more later on in the season.
“It’s still early. It’s six games that we’ve played so far. The message that we’ve talked to them about is that in order to be a great team offensively and defensively all five people have to be on the same page. We got people that are figuring it out; it’s just player one, two and three may figure it out faster than player four and five, which still doesn’t give us the continuity that we need,” Groce said. “Players are learning. Every game they’re getting a little better and a little bit more confident.
"Ultimately, what I tell players a lot is that, you know, in the regular season the state gives you 30 exhibitions to get ready for the seven games that matter. We’re trying to use every regular season game to prepare for the postseason,” he added. “Hopefully it don’t take us all 30 games—hopefully we get it figured out faster than that—but they are learning and they are growing.”
Laila Hill led the Lady Golden Tigers with 12 points against the Lady Black Bears while Alexia Groce scored 11 points in the defeat.
Russellville’s varsity boys played the nightcap against Austin on Monday night. While the game began differently than the girls’ contest played right before it—the Golden Tigers held a 14-12 advantage after the first period—the end result was pretty similar: The Black Bears purchased a foothold late in the first period, seized the lead in the second, and then continued to press their advantage in the second half.
Austin, making the most of Russellville turnovers and winning the rebound battle in the second period of play, took a nine-point advantage into halftime. The Black Bears then went on a 10-0 run to start the second half before eventually jumping out to a lead as high as 31 points in the fourth period.
“I thought for a half we competed real well,” Russellville head coach Patrick Odom said. “They came out and hit us in the mouth pretty good in the third quarter, and we didn’t respond very well.
“(Austin) did a really good job of trying to keep EJ (King) and Jah (Williams) out of the paint, and I thought at times we probably tried to do too much,” he added. “We gotta be able to stretch the defense out. We just gotta be able to play with a little bit more flow, and they did a really good job, because of their physicality, of taking us out of that. We’ve gotta grow up, make some adjustments, and we’ll be fine.
“We’re still a good team. They’re just the best team we’ve seen, and we didn’t play real well. We’ve gotta work through the adversity. We haven’t dealt with any and we didn’t handle it as well as we needed to, but it’s early December basketball.”
Odom and the Golden Tigers are no strangers to playoff basketball. Odom, now in his 10th year as Russellville’s head coach, said playing big opponents like Austin early in the regular season should pay dividends come the postseason.
“We needed to play a really good team. These are the teams that are on our schedule because we want to be able to be prepared for this type of stuff when we see it late in February,” Odom said. “We need to play these games, I love playing these games, and tonight will make us better.”
Senior EJ King, who is averaging 28.3 points-per-game this season, led the Golden Tigers with 21 points in the loss. Junior Cameron Phinizee was Russellville’s second-leading scorer with nine points.
Up next for the RHS girls’ and boys’ basketball teams is Brooks. Russellville will travel to Killen for the doubleheader on Tuesday, December 3rd.
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