The Hobbton Wildcat men hosted James Kenan Wednesday night, losing to JK, 65-50, in a hard fought conference match-up.
Kenan held a 16-13 advantage after one quarter. Early in the second quarter, the Wildcats made up the deficit and briefly took the lead at 18-17. However, the visiting Tigers changed defensive strategies and the Wildcats lost the advantage. Kenan had a 32-19 lead at the break. In the third Kenan continued to pound the Wildcats taking a49-35 lead into the final period.
For the Wildcats, Hunter Britt had 17 points and Collin King had 11. The rest of the scoring was 3’s and 4’ among the other players.
Wildcat coach Alphonzo Hooper said, “It was a tough ball game tonight against James Kenan. Coach (Jeff) Byrd does a good job with them. I didn’t know how we were going to come out but we played with them the first quarter. They are aggressive and jumped on us. We came back and made a run.
“In the second quarter he came out with a full court press and we weren’t ready for it. That threw us off some. We made some adjustments at half time and tried to put some of the speedy guys in. We made a run and cut it to 7 or 8 before it got away from us. Its hard playing back to back games, especially with a triple overtime last night. No excuses. We have to play the hand we are dealt. James Kenan is real athletic. We just made too many turnovers down the stretch. We had some mental mistakes also.”
The Wildcats played 3 overtimes Tuesday night at Princeton before getting a 69-66 win over the Bulldogs. Hooper went on to mention that game, saying, “what a ballgame last night (Tuesday) against Princeton. It went into triple overtime. We jumped out on Princeton to start with and thought maybe we had them on the ropes. But we got kind of lackadaisical and Princeton started hitting shots. It was ‘tooth and nail’ for the rest of the game. It was a good win for us and we were glad to get it. I told the guys before the game that even though Princeton was 0-12, they were going to play well in their gym. My hat’s off to Coach Davis. He did a great job of coaching his team.”
In the Princeton game, Hunter Britt had 19, Nicholas Bryant had 12, Collin King had 11 and Omar Farrior had 10.
The Wildcats travel to Neuse Charter Friday night.