Veterans rocks The Hangar in regular season finale with 72-60 win against Northside

KATHLEEN — They don’t call it home court advantage for no reason.

Veterans let any student in the game for a dollar if they were wearing red, white or blue (for obvious reasons). Needless to say the gym was packed for a region and county rivalry game and the regular season finale against Northside (13-11, 2-7 Region 2-5A)

It was a tight contest that ended in a 12-point, 72-60 win for the Warhawks (11-14, 3-7 Region), finished by Jaivyon Dawson’s two-handed slam that nearly took the top off of The Hangar.

“We preached all week about [the] student body being at the game, creating a great atmosphere,” Veterans head coach Brandon Driggers said postgame. “Creating a dollar game for students to get in, and they really showed up. I told [the team] you got a great crowd out there tonight man, give them a show.”

From the opening tip the Dirty Birds student section jeered at Northside’s and exploded at every big play.

Braylon Lott scooped up a loose ball and put all the energy from the crowd into a thunderous two-handed dunk. As he swung on the rim and landed on his feet, the crowd continued to roar as the Warhawks took a 14-10 lead in the final minute of the first quarter.

It was an intense, physical game that saw each team at the free throw line often. The difference in leads was points off of turnovers, but when one took the edge the other came back with an answer.

The Eagles’ tying shot fell off of the rim at the halftime buzzer, and Veterans led 30-28.

Northside big Elijah Patmon had eight of his 12 points in the third quarter, all of which came at the start.

Shots weren’t falling and the Eagles needed to respond as Veterans took a four-point lead, the largest for either since the first quarter.

Vontrez Quainton got a pass down to Patmon on the block to take the lead 40-38 with 3:55 to go until the final period. That ended up being their last time ahead.

“The biggest key was when they would take [Patmon] out the game we would take Trey Byrd out, get him time to rest, and we would flip our rotations based off who they were bringing into the game,” Driggers said of the four-star football recruit. “Patmon’s a good football player, man, he was down there going to work.”

Contributing more bodies to the fray was a big part of stopping the defensive end, and limiting the extra possessions he gave the Eagles.

“Second chance opportunities. You limit second chance opportunities you’ll run away with the game,” Driggers said. “We start the third, they had 12 points [in the quarter], and 10 were off second chance opportunities…I feel like early fourth, late third maybe we started rebounding the basketball.”

Tre Embry’s deep wing three-pointer broke a stalemate and highlighted a 7-0 run that put the Warhawks ahead for good.

Northside enjoyed being in the bonus for roughly the last five minutes of the game, but they couldn’t get enough stops before the Warhawks blew it open with a couple of dunks in the final minutes.

“We keep telling them, it’s how you playing at the end of the season. We still got stuff to work on, but I feel like we’re heading in the right direction,” Driggers said.

UP NEXT

Veterans’ regular season is over, and they’ll prepare for the Region 2-5A play-in game on Feb. 10 at Northside High School.

The rest of the region tournament will be at Coffee High School unless one of two things happens: The Coffee girls lose their next to games against Houston County and Lee County, or lose to Lee County by more than 27 points for the tiebreaker.

Northside will finish their regular season schedule with a road trip to Thomas County Central on Feb. 6 at 7:30 p.m.