Griffin’s 28-point fourth quarter knocks off Houston County to end the Cliff Hutto Memorial Bear Brawl

WARNER ROBINS — Houston County (5-3) and Griffin (6-0) gave the Cliff Hutto Memorial Bear Brawl a worthy sendoff, but the Bears in green came out the victors, 76-64.

Josh Jackson dropped a Griffin defender and drained a three while Malik Gillespie followed on the next possession with a trey of his own to put HoCo up 50-44 with 45 seconds to play in the third quarter.

That got the crowd back into the game and swung the momentum in HoCo’s favor. Neither team could gain an edge through the first three quarters and this felt like this turning point.

And it was, but for Griffin.

From that moment on Griffin outscored HoCo 32-14, though some of that is score padding from late free throws. The game truly ended around the one minute mark when Griffin went up 67-59.

“We kind of let them get in a rhythm. We got in a little foul trouble so we had to play with the lineup a little bit, but the two big lineup in there,” HoCo head coach Buddy Bivins said. “We went zone [and] they started hitting some shots. We also gave them too many second chance shots. Rebounding [has] kind of been plaguing us this season.”

Even with the aforementioned two big lineup of Mahkel Stephens and Joshua Pettigrew HoCo had trouble on the boards. They didn’t box out and Griffin just went around and grabbed one or sometimes two offensive rebounds on one possession.

Given the size HoCo has rebounding should not be an issue. According to Bivins it’s purely an effort problem.

“[Effort is] everything,” Bivins said. “[A] shot will go up, we’ll be in position, it’s kind of like us waiting for somebody else to go get it instead of us going to get it. So that’s really what it is…I told them until we can figure that out we’ll have struggles and lose games we’re not supposed to lose.”

It was also an offense problem for HoCo. They hit nine threes as a team but some early success led to them taking too many. With the tough interior Griffin defense they settled for shots when they needed to attack the rim, like when they were in the bonus for the final 4:19 of the third quarter.

“We started settling too much. We got a time in the third, we kind of took our time, we got in the bonus. We attacked the rim forcing their bigs to have to play defense, but we kind of got away from that,” Bivins said. “Hitting threes is kind of a bad part about going on a run like that where threes not falling because then you start to fall in love with them. Kind of wish we could be patient, do the things that got you the lead. But it is what it is, I say we just learn from it.”

UP NEXT

Houston County will play St. Anne-Pacelli on Friday, Dec. 19 at 7 p.m.

Griffin will host Lovejoy on Monday, Dec. 15 at 7 p.m.