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THE COMMERCE (GA) NEWS, WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2007 -- PAGE 3B Tigers Improving; Seek 1st Win T. Green looks for an open man under the basket during the Athens Academy game. Coach Chad Bridges is seeing some incremental improvement in his boys’ basketball season, and he’d like to see them break into the win column this week. After a game Tuesday (details of which were not available by press time) at Prince Avenue, the 0-4 Tigers are slated to host Hebron Christian Academy Friday and travel to Dawson County Saturday. “We’re going to try to increase our pace offensively to get a few more shots up,” Bridges said. “We’ll try to do that with a little more defensive pressure. I’m hop ing to see continued improve ment on the offensive end. We’ve gotten better each game, and if we continue to improve, we’ll be okay. “That’s what I keep telling the guys. The great thing about bas ketball is that everybody plays in the tournament. If we can con tinue to improve, I think it’s more important to play well at tourna ment time than now.” The biggest problem right now is shooting, and Bridges hopes time will bring some relief. “If we execute and get good shots, eventually the shooting per centage will go up,” Bridges said. Social Circle 48, CHS 38 “We started slow and had a poor shooting night,” Bridges summa rized. “I thought we played hard, but we didn’t shoot well. I don’t think we scored in the first four minutes, then we went cold in the second half.” Matt Adams led the scor ing with 11 points, followed by Anthony Norris with nine, Cohen Cooke with eight and T. Green with seven. Spartans 61, Tigers 33 Last Thursday’s game at Athens Academy featured both “a poor shooting performance” and “the defense did not play well,” Bridges said. Some of the poor shooting, the coach theorized, could have been related to the uniqueness of the Spartan gym, where the free-standing goals cause a bit of depth perception difficulty. “We were five for 19 from the free throw line, which is worse than we usually do. Saturday, we were five for eight.” Cooke scored 11, T. Green five and Wilcher four in a night in which the Tigers were down 30-10 at the half. ACS 67, CHS 57 Things picked up a little Saturday night at Athens Christian School, but the end result was the fourth loss of the season. “The team played its best game by far, but a slow third quarter and foul trouble ultimately did us in,” Bridges commented. “If we can play with the same intensity and effort this week, we should have a lot more exciting games ahead of us.” Three Tigers got into double figures. Cooke led scoring with 13 points, followed by Drake Cash with 11, Norris with 10, Adams with eight, Cameron Billings with six and T. Green with five. —Lady Tigers Notch First Win Cont. from Page 1B really trying to take one or two phases at a time — now we’re work ing on our rebounding — and when you get that where you want it to be, you go to another. As long as we can see our game improving, we will take that and try to build in it and work toward the end of the season. Some victories along the way would be nice, because when you win, it builds confidence, and confidence does a lot for how you play.” SC 73, CHS 30 There weren’t many highlights to the Social Circle game Dec. 4. The Redskins’ leading scorer, Je- lessa Williams, put 32 points on the board, 27 of them in the first half, something McCurley attrib uted to a lack of emotion from his squad. “She’s a good player. After she makes a few, you’d think you’d move up on her, but we continued to let her shoot.” Lauren Jones’ nine points were high for Commerce. Brittany Sewell scored eight, Jasmine Sand ers six and Morgan Mather five. CHS 39, Spartans 27 “I was very pleased with the de fensive intensity,” McCurley said. The Tigers built as much as a 16- point lead, putting them away with a 12-2 third quarter. “We came out and wanted to fo cus on defense,” McCurley said. “We did that. I was pleased with the effort there. They hadn’t beaten Athens Academy in a number of years, so that was a good win and gets us a region win, which is al ways important.” Sewell led the offense with 10 points, Grier added nine and Jessie Flint contributed seven. ACS 55, CHS 43 In spite of the score, McCurley was excited about the Lady Tigers’ play. “We probably played our best game, except for the shooting,” the coach said. “We controlled the game up until about the middle of the fourth quarter. If we had made some of our easier shots and free throws ...” The Lady Tigers made 14 of 33 free throws. “They made theirs. That was the difference,” McCurley said. The game was tied at 20 at the half. Commerce led most of the third quarter, but Athens Christian rallied to take a 37-32 lead, only to see the Lady Tigers come back at the beginning of the fourth period and go up by a point. As the game waned and Commerce began foul ing to force Athens Christian to the free throw line, the Eagles made 13 of 16 from the charity stripe. “We were getting good shots. A basket here and a couple of free throws and it would have been a different game,” McCurley said. “Honestly, except for the shooting, I was pleased with the rest of the game. We didn’t turn it over much. They pressed the whole game and we handled it. We got good shots, but we missed a lot of shots.” Overall, McCurley thinks his squad is coming around. “I think they’re starting to see some things are getting better. Shooting just isn’t one of them,” he said. “The kids are still learning how to win. As we get to the latter parts of the game, they haven’t had much success. They don’t know how to come from a few points down and grab control of the game or how to hold on from a few points up.” Brake Failure Adds Excitement To Road Trip Commerce’s varsity Tigers and Lady Tigers found out last Thursday that a road trip can be exciting. Too exciting, maybe . A brake failure on the school bus carrying both teams to Athens Academy resulted in a close call where Waterworks Road ends at Hwy. 335. “It was our first road game and my first time on a school bus in 16 years, and I thought I was going to get killed,” com mented Lady Tigers coach Eddie McCurley. The bus was slowing for the stop sign when the brakes went out. “I looked up and he said, ‘We’re about to have a wreck,’” McCurley said. There was no traffic coming from the Nicholson side, but an SUV was coming from the Jefferson end. Massey was able to turn the bus south onto Hwy. 326, and the Jeep was able to go around him on the left. “Wes did a great job of keep ing us from getting hit. 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