BOYS HOOPS
One look at the Greyhounds schedule would suggest some major tasks ahead.
Jones County, which hosted top-ranked Eagles Landing on Tuesday, has its final region home game Friday against Warner Robins with the regular season ending next Friday at Dutchtown, a stretch that will set the Greyhounds spot for the region tournament.
But as tempting as it may be for Jones County to look ahead, that’s not the prime target of its focus right now.
Rather, it’s battling through injuries.
The Greyhounds’ 65-45 win Friday against Locust Grove was sandwiched in between a 65-57 loss to Union Grove and 62-58 on Saturday to Northeast.
That dropped the Greyhounds record to 14-6 overall and 4-4 in the region, in a three-way tie for fifth as this week began. Of Jones County’s four remaining games following last weekend, three were against teams in the top four of the region – Eagles Landing, Warner Robins and next Friday’s road opponent, Dutchtown.
“Right now, we have to take it one at a time no matter who we are playing because we’re the walking wounded right now,” Greyhounds head coach Buck Harris said. “We’re not looking over anyone or looking ahead. We’ll take it as they come and one game at a game.”
Daethan Harris, consistently Jones County’s second-leading scorer and a key piece to running the offense, was sidelined Friday with his arm in a sling. Kaden Douglas is bouncing back from a groin injury, and Harris said on Friday he was at about 60 percent healthy.
“God bless him. He’s trying to help us the best way he can, but he’s limited,” Harris said of Douglas, who scored four first-quarter points on Friday.
With others banged up, others have had to step up in Friday’s win.
That held true Friday with Geo Wade chipping in with seven points and Tay Lattimore adding six. That cemented a widespread scoring night for Jones County with three in double figures, led by Jaylen Sanford’s 12 points, Jaden Stanley’s 11 and Judd Anderson’s 10.
“I thought overall, the energy and effort was tremendous,” Harris said. “We wanted to focus on rebounding, defending and competing. I said to them, ‘if we do those things, we won’t have to worry about shots; everything will take care of itself.’” Jones County floored the gas early against Locust Grove, racing to a 23-4 lead after a quarter before the Wildcats steadied things a bit to only trail 38-25 at the break. Closing a gap was one thing, but being able to dig further into the Greyhounds lead was another, as Jones County was able to rotate scorers off the bench to take care of things in the second half for the win.
Jones County drained a trio of three points on Friday thanks to Wade, Stanley and Chase Hadaway.
