Varsity Basketball

Girls:  The Patriot varsity girls ended their regular season on a down note by losing to Hart County 56-43.

Latoria Royal would be the first to score for OC at 4:20 in the first quarter from the foul line.  After that Royal seemed to have a bulls eye on her back getting fouled twice more.  She made Hart pay for their indiscretion by going 4/6 at the line in the first quarter.  Hart fouled her once again in the second quarter, but after dropping another basket from the line Hart left her alone.  For the game Royal lead the team with 13, and three rebounds. 

        Aubry Fearnow, who had another fine defensive game with six points, seven rebounds and a steal, put up two first quarter points for OC.  Fearnow’s real contribution was slugging it out with Hart under the basket at both ends of the court. 

        Both Trenetta Smith and Jessica Pulliam pulled down four rebounds each.  Smith was the second highest scorer for OC with ten. 

        At the half OC was down 35-14.  When the third quarter started HC, who was up by 21, continued their full court press, which they started in the second.  In fact, Hart sustained their press nearly to the fourth quarter. 

        OC had 26 rebounds for the game.  Itika Howard and Taylor McDaniel both had three.  And Tanisha Eberheart had five points for the game. 

        As a side note, during halftime, Taylor McDaniel’s dad said that Taylor had five offers from Division I schools in softball and over 20 offers from Division II schools.  Congratulations Taylor. 

Boys:  The boys also finished the regular season by losing to Hart County 55-36.  Even so, OC put on quite a show throughout the game.

        One thing that the Hart County boys did that left a bad taste in the home crowd’s mouth was when pre-game practice was over, instead of putting the balls back in the basket in the corner of the gym they let them fall to the court and walked back to their bench without putting them in the basket.  The OC guys had to clean-up after them. 

        In the first quarter Maurice “Slim” Freeman showed the crowd what dunking was all about with three in a row.  Freeman’s first dunk came at the 2:40 mark of the quarter.  In the next 50 seconds Freeman would put in two more the last of which was a patented Slim Freeman Ally Oop.  Freeman was also OC’s top scorer with 16 on the night. 

        OC would finish the first quarter down by eight, 18-10.  The second quarter was pretty much a “we score – they score” quarter.  At the half OC was down by only ten, 28-18.

        Like the pre-game warm-up, the pre-third quarter warm-up saw Hart once again leave the ball on the court and walk back to their bench.  This time, however, the Ref’s rolled the balls back to the corner baskets.

        The third quarter was a different game from OC’s point of view.  Freeman had another dunk along with two more baskets of the regular kind.  Shaq Fleming generated some offense with four as did Josh Jarrels and Xavier Eberhart.  At 2:13 of the third OC pulled to within seven of Hart but that’s where OC’s shooting went cold.  In fact, it was so cold that OC could only manage 4 fourth quarter points and that following a 14 point third quarter.

        On the night Freeman was tops in scoring along with two rebounds, two blocked shots and a steal.  Eberhart had nine making him OC’s second highest scorer.  Eberhart had five rebounds and blocked two of Hart’s shots.  Jarrells, too, had five rebounds and four points for the night.  Fleming would put six on the board and had three rebounds and a steal. 

        As soon as information about the region tournament is published it will be posted here at OCHS Sports.