SHERIDAN – Joe Scott will remember this basketball season for the way it ended – with Sheridan’s 20th win of the season.
When the Yellowjackets last reached that plateau, the longtime coach doesn’t know.
“We looked back at records and stats, and we don’t know when the last 20-win season was,” said Scott, who finished his 13th season as varsity coach and 19th in the Sheridan School District. “This is something our kids really accomplished.”
Sheridan defeated U.S. 270 nemesis White Hall 62-52 inside Yellowjacket Arena on Thursday, but the win was not enough to get the Jackets (20-11, 8-8 in 5A-South) a berth in next week’s 5A state tournament at Greene County Tech.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
The Jackets came into Thursday’s regular-season finale a game behind Hot Springs Lakeside and White Hall for the fourth and final seed from the 5A-South. Lakeside and El Dorado each finished 9-7 in the conference to tie for third, and Lakeside would have owned the head-to-head tiebreaker with White Hall (15-14, 8-8) due to a larger margin of victory, had those two teams been deadlocked for fourth.
“It don’t get much better in the state than the 5A-South,” Scott said. “It’s one of the top premier leagues in the state. We did have a couple of bad games we wish we could have back.”
Still, Scott remarked, Sheridan chalked up a great season.
Even with an unclear playoff picture, the latest Yellowjackets-Bulldogs showdown unfolded in a playoff-like atmosphere. White Hall knotted the game at 20-all midway through the second quarter, but Sheridan went on a 7-2 run and eventually took a 29-26 lead into halftime.
The game maintained a back-and-forth pace with the Bulldogs trailing 55-52, but tough interior defense with Lane Bickford manning the post helped keep them scoreless in the final 2 minutes, as Sheridan scored 7 unanswered to seal the win.
Bickford, a 6-foot-5 junior, finished with 19 points and 16 rebounds.
“Having Coach believe in me and my family believe in me, playing for Coach Scott,” Bickford said. “It’s amazing to come out and play for this team. It’s wonderful to have 20 wins, too.
Tristen Dunlap scored 18 points, and Brian Cal Jr. and Antwan McCray each scored 11 for the Bulldogs.
White Hall won the first meeting of the season, 65-59, on Jan. 17 but Scott said two of his key players were missing at the time, Noah Romine and Beckett Scott. In this go-round, senior Romine had 16 points and 5 assists, and senior Nate Carter threw in 15 points and pulled down 8 rebounds.
“Today, we were full throttle,” Scott said. “We had our full team, and we took it to them. We had a great second half and we came out and persevered. All I wanted us to do was get stops and rebounds. We knew we could score, but we were just concentrating on stops and rebounds.”