In their final tournament of pre-district play, the Rockdale Tiger basketball team placed third in their 3-2 performance at Taylor Duck Tournament last Thursday through Saturday.
Led by a 22-point performance from Kelan Evans, the Tigers defeated the class 2A Brazos Cougars 48-34 in their first game of the tourney.
“I think against Brazos, that was our best game so far from start to finish,” said Sean Coleman, Rock-dale High School boy’s head basketball coach. “In our last game against La Grange, we didn’t execute things that well.
“But against (Brazos), we showed so much strength defensively, and I saw how much our mental toughness has improved in just the past week. Mental toughness is what I’ve put the most emphasis on with my players, and I was glad to see that from them.”
Rockdale lost two games the next day. First, they lost to tournament host Taylor 64-37. Evans led the team in scoring again with 13 points in their second loss in nine days to the Ducks. Other notable scorers for the Tigers included Mason Monzingo with nine points, and Cayden McBride, with six.
Later on, the blue-and-gold fell 44-35 to another class 4A school, the Giddings Buffaloes. The Tigers trailed 10-9 at the end of the first quarter, but were outscored 14-5 in second quarter. RHS played the Buffs close in the second half, outscoring them 21-20, but it wasn’t enough to close the ten-point deficit from the first two quarters of play. Kobe Mitchell led Rockdale with 12 points, and Evans had six. Zac Davis was a factor on both sides of the court with five points and eight rebounds. Seven of his rebounds were defensive.
On Saturday, the Tigers bounced back with two victories. In the morning against IDEA Montopolis, they took the lead in the final three minutes of game to win 39-36. To close the tournament, they defeated Manor New Tech 60-50.
“We need to continue working,” Coleman said. “We saw moments of how good we can be at this tournament, but not on a consistent basis.”
The Tigers played against Milano on Tuesday evening after press time, and the results will be in next week’s issue of the Rockdale Reporter. On Friday, the Rockdale squad will go up Highway 79 to face the Thorndale Bulldogs in their final pre-district contest. The Bulldogs are 9-3, and are picked to place second in district 25-2A.
The Tigers start district play on Tuesday, Dec. 18 at home against McGregor.
Junior Varsity
The junior varsity went 3-0 on Friday and Saturday in Taylor. They beat Giddings 33-26 after going up 11-4 in the first quarter. Raymond McBride and J.J. Moreno were the leading scorers with seven and six points. In their second game on Friday, the Tigers came back in the fourth quarter to beat Taylor 52-49. Rock-dale was down 39-32 at the end of the third and outscored the Ducks 20-10 in the final quarter to end the day undefeated. Jace Robinson had 18 points and Anthony Dansby had eight. Ryan Blair and Christian Briggs were also key contributors with five points. each. Similar to the varsity, the Tigers ended their tourney with a win over Manor New Tech, defeating the Titans 35-12.
Freshman
The freshman team went 0-3 in their first tournament of the season. On Friday, the Tigers lost 49-19 to Taylor. Amarion Butler and Tra’on Crawford accounted for all but three Rockdale points with eight apiece. The Tigers fell to Giddings 29-14 on Saturday morning. According to Coach Ethan Noel, Creek Windham and Jake Hasselbach were court leaders for the Tigers. The ninth graders later faced McCallum (Austin) in a 34-15 loss. Hayden Aguilar and A.J. Hicks were the leading scorers with five and four points respectively.
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