Franklin County teams squared off at the Russellville Middle School gym on Friday, December 13th as the Russellville High School varsity girls’ and boys’ basketball teams hosted Phil Campbell.
The Lady Golden Tigers and Lady Bobcats tipped the night off, the visitors coming out on top 54-51. Phil Campbell led for the duration, but Russellville kept it close, keeping the score within three points at the end of the final two periods.
The victory capped a great week for the Lady Bobcats, who knocked off Class 5A Russellville after earning consecutive area wins against Colbert Heights and Sheffield.
There was a silver lining in the defeat for the Lady Golden Tigers, though, with sophomore Ella Copeland scoring her 1,000th career point during the contest. Copeland, in her first game of the season, hit the milestone in the first few minutes; sitting at 995 points coming in, Copeland scored five of Russellville’s opening seven points to reach the mark.
“Most people don’t ever have the opportunity to score 1,000 points. For her to accomplish it as a sophomore, it’s a testament to her ability to put the ball in the basket,” Russellville head coach Jermaine Groce said. “She’s progressively gotten better every year. As an eighth grader she was averaging about 14 points per game. As a ninth grader she was up to 17 or 18 points per game. This season she came into the season injured and so she didn’t have an opportunity to play in our first eight games. But when she came in (Friday) night, she wasted no time. She needed five points going in and I think she got in in the first two minutes.
“She’s a special athlete and I’m lucky to have coached someone like her,” he added.
Groce also praised Copeland for the time and energy the sophomore puts into the game, as well as her perseverance and tenacity in returning from injury so quickly.
“No one understands the amount of work she puts in,” Groce said. “I track minutes in the gym and she consistently puts up 200 to 300 minutes on her own—that’s outside of what we do in practice.
“She tore her ACL in late July, early August which is another testament to her hard work and dedication. She has defied everybody,” Groce said. “Most people were skeptical of her ability to return and we’re still mindful of that. She’s still on a limited rotation, but she rehabs all the time, she doesn’t miss an appointment, she does everything that the doctors ask her to do, and to be able to come back probably after four or five months of the surgery, it takes a special individual to be able to do that.”
In the final game of the evening, Russellville’s boys took care of business against Phil Campbell, defeating the Bobcats 66-41 to improve to 4-2. At halftime Russellville led by 19 points, even after Austin Elliott sank a buzzer-beater from beyond half-court to make it 38-19. In the second half, the Golden Tigers extended their lead, eventually winning the game by 25 points.
“It’s always good to win,” Russellville head coach Patrick Odom said in his postgame radio interview. “Losing the game earlier in the midweek when Hillcrest had to cancel, I felt being off for a few days kinda hurt us. But, you know, proud of the win. There’s an escalation in the competition level we’re gonna see over the holidays, which is really good for us. We just gotta continue to grow and get better. We’re in a good spot but we’re nowhere near where we wanna be.”
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