Timmy Knipp put on a shooting show, but Logan County showed what a team working together could do in a 64-56 upset of Elliott County Monday in the
opening game of the First Southern National Bank/Roy's BBQ Christmas Classic.
The Russellville Panthers had more trouble with Caverna than had been expected, but put away the Colonels 80-66 in the tournament's second game.
Both teams earned berths in Tuesday's semifinals. The Panthers will meet the Central Hardin, a 60-50 winner over Clarksville Northwest, at 6 p.m. at
LCHS while the Cougars will take on Ohio County at 7:30. The Eagles won 77-73 over Clarksville Northeast Monday night. The entire boys tournament is
being played at LCHS.
Logan County 64, Elliott County 56
.
Knipp, one of the state's top-ranked underclassmen, is 6-7 or taller, but he really didn't need that height to launch 17 three-point attempts. He hit
five of them as part of his 33 points, but didn't get a single offensive rebound.
Meanwhile fellow junior Troy Graham scored 28 points and pulled down six rebounds while sophomore Twin Lancaster had 16 points and an overwhelming 15
rebounds for the Cougars. Together they helped the home team pile up a 49-40 rebounding advantage over an Elliott County team which started 6-5 Jacob
Ison in addition to Knipp.
The Cougars led 6-3 early, but didn't lead again in the first half. The Lions were up 15-11 after a quarter and 27-23 at halftime.
Graham had a huge third quarter for Logan. He scored the first five points of the second half to give the Cougars a 28-27 lead and totaled 12 points in
the quarter. The lead changed hards eight times in that seesaw stanza before Brett Sowell's goal put the Cougars up for keeps at 39-38. After Graham
drove for a 3-point play that included a foul on Knipp, Logan led 43-39 in the third, but one of Knipp's treys cut the lead to two going into the final
quarter.
Most of the fourth quarter found the Cougars taking the ball hard to the hole; many of the shots that had rimmed out early in the game went in this
time. Yet Knipp kept nipping at the Cougars' tails, bombing repeatedly from 15-feet out or more. He even went inside once for a dunk on his team's
final goal..
Knipp's trey with 3:42 cut the Cougar margin to one, but the Lions managed only two more points the rest of the game. Reuben Rawlings-Watson scored on
a drive, giving him six points and seven rebounds off the bench. Graham hit five free throws and scored on a pass from Seth McReynolds in the final
three-plus minutes. McReynolds also got a key defensive rebound and did a lot of the ball handling in the clutch.
Derrod Blakey, the only Cougar with similar height to Elliott County, got six rebounds in 13 minutes and 21 seconds of action, but he picked up three
fouls in the first 52 seconds of the second quarter to end his effectiveness on the day.
Also contributing to the win over Elliott County, which won 32 games last year and reached the state's Final Four, were Tyler Davenport and Phillip
Stratton.
Elliott County hit only 10 two-point field goals while connecting on 10 of 36 from long range. Logan hit only one 3-pointer but benefitted from taking
the ball to the goal by shooting 23 free throws, hitting 13, including 12 of 16 by Graham.
"I knew this would be a battle, but I also knew our team would play hard. These guys always do," said winning coach Harold Tackett. "We're starting to
execute now. We wouldn't have won this game a year ago because we hadn't learned to win. You can see our confidence growing. In fact, you could see it
grow as this game went along."
Tackett said he chose to play Elliott County because of its state tournament experience. "You don't get better playing an easy schedule," he said.
Russellville 80, Caverna 64
The Panthers were dominant in parts of this game and almost let Caverna catch up at other times. It was only 20-18 early in the second quarter, but led
by the aggressive play of Devonta Bryant, they soared to a 43-25 lead at halftime.
Caverna kept coming back behind the play of 6-4 Jerrod Harper, who had 23 points and 11 rebounds. Harper hit 11 of 15 field goal attempts. Caverna
outscored RHS 28-13 in the third quarter and tailed only 56-53 at the break, even though the Panthers had gone up 54-46 on Darrin Murphy's rebound
shot.
"I told D.J. (Quarles) and DaDa (Elam) that they had to quit settling for long shots and use their strength and quickness to go to the goal in the
fourth quarter," said Assistant Coach Jeff Stamps, who helped Rusty Clark direct the team in the absence of head coach Dennis Pardue, who had to sit
out the game after being ejected from the Panthers' previous outing at Paducah Tilghman. The dynamic juniors did what he asked, took the game over and
sewed up the win.
Quarles finished with 20 points, 7 rebounds, 6 steals and 6 assists, all team highs. Elam had 15 points and 4 assists. Justin Bollenbecker added 14
points and 6 rebounds. Bryant was the fourth double-figure scorer with 11 points. He added 5 rebounds, 4seals and 2 assists.
Also playing in the win were Trevor Clark, Victor Hampton, Kevin Temple, Davis Pardue, Ryan Bibb, Zach Hines and Jordan Kennedy.
Brett Davidson scored 14 for Coach Tim Arnold's Colonels and Jordan Rice added 12.