Lions advance to area round with win over Petrolia
By Sam Waller
The Albany Lions boys basketball team extended its season Monday, Feb. 17 with a 46-33 victory over Petrolia in a Class 2A Division II bi-district playoff at Graham.
The Lions (14-8) advance to the area round later this week to face the Graford Jackrabbits, who won against Crawford on Tuesday night. Albany coach Ryder Peacock said the area game will be played Friday, Feb. 21 at 7p.m. in Eastland’s Marshall Gymnasium. Ticket information was still being worked out at press time.
Monday’s win marked the fifth year in a row the Lions have won the bi-district title and the third time in that stretch they’ve beaten Petrolia in the first round. Peacock said Albany’s transition game was the key factor this time around.
“I thought the guys did a good job of rebounding, which we put an emphasis on,” he said. “We got rebounds, got outlets, pushed the ball up the floor and got some easy baskets off transition.”
Albany was able to make the strategy work despite facing a Petrolia front line that included 6-foot-6 Ramsey Hensley and 6-foot-4 Aaron Gallagher.
“I was so proud of our defensive effort and rebounding,” Peacock said. “That was big.”
Aaden Mendez and Huffman Heatly each scored 14 points to lead the Lions with Clay Chapman adding 11 points.
“We stressed all week to rebound and run the floor, and we did a good job of that for three quarters,” Peacock said. “We pulled it out in the fourth quarter, tried to stretch their defense and get some layups. We showed some nerves there at the end, but we did what we needed to do.”
Albany led most of the way, turning a 10-6 advantage at the end of the first quarter into a 19-9 halftime lead. In the third quarter, Mendez broke loose for 11 points as the Lions pushed the lead to 36-19.
“We got on them in the third quarter and got up 17,” Peacock said. “They were able to get it back to about 10 at the end, but I don’t think it ever got below 10.”
After not attempting a free throw in the first half, Albany finished 9 of 13 at the line. The Lions sank six of eight attempts in the fourth quarter to keep the Pirates at bay.
“We ended up getting some layups and were able to make some free throws to put them away,” Peacock said.
On Thursday, Feb. 13, Albany lost 55-22 to Whiteface in warmup game at Ira. Scoring details were not available.
Peacock said the priority was to work on preparing for Petrolia after not playing for nearly a week. The Lions finished their district schedule Friday, Feb. 7 and had the district bye on Tuesday, Feb. 11.
“The main thing was to get on the floor and get our feet going again, not have a long break between games,” he said. “The big thing was to keep some sort of rhythm.”
Among the areas the coach focused on was playing different defenses.
“We changed our defense and played something we haven’t done much this year,” he said. “That let us see some of the flaws we need to work out in case that’s something we need to go to. We haven’t played man defense but for about a quarter the whole year, so it was good to be able to go almost a full game in that.”
The matchup also forced the team to adapt to an unfamiliar opponent, something that will become more important as the playoffs progress.
“It was good to play someone we don’t know anything about, just go in and work on things we need to work on,” Peacock said. “We told the guys we’re not looking at the scoreboard, just watching them to make sure we work out our flaws. And we got some of the other guys in who haven’t been playing much.”
