Very good games and the season is getting short

The two games we attended last night ended up Page girls 46, Dudley 44 and Dudley boys 57, Page 56…

You could not ask for any closer games than these two and they were not only close, they were physical and there were key calls by the officials, but that always seems to be the case…

The best games are the tight games and they become the close games and you are going to have teams that are fighting it out for these wins….

Beejay Pittman might be the most imporved player in the area this season, as he runs the point for the Dudley boys…The kid has really come on and he is on his way….Dudley boys became the first Metro 4-A team to beat Page, with the win by the Panthers at the Mac Morris Gym last evening…..Lots of key plays in this game and loads of blocked shots….

Jalen Seegars(Page) and Issac Brunson(Dudley) were the shot-block masters last night…..

Paris Kea scored zero points in the first half, but she exploded for 19 points in the second half to help lead the Page Pirate ladies over the Dudley Panthers….I say helped lead her team, because Paris got a bountiful supply of help on the inside from Vivian Polite, who was anything but polite on this night…She was downright tough inside last night…

Dudley’s Kiarra Harrison is fast becoming one of the smoothest players in our area and she should continue to get even better in time….Makala Rouse may have to become more selfish in the latter stages of this season and just flat-out work to take over for Dudley…She can get to the basket and she will have to…

Essence Abraham, from Dudley, took a bad spill over by the Page bench last night and I don’t think she was shoved into the Gatorade watercart….My feeling is that she got tangled up with the Page player, as they were both going for the loose ball and the Page player may have grabbed Abraham’s jersey and that might have gotten the whole event going out of control…I do not believe the Page player grabbed at the jersey intentionally, it was just happening as the two players were going for the ball and there was contact, but the officials will have to make that call….

Lots of kudos to Dr. James Kramer, who arrived on the scene just in the niok of time…The trainers on the scene were attending to Abraham, but when Dr. Kramer got there, he seemed to know just what to do, and Essence was up and walking off of the court soon after Dr. Kramer showed up and went to work…Huge kudos to Dr. Kramer for his work with all of the players in our area…Essence’s parents were concerned and they have a right to be….You have to expect parents to get excited when their children are down laid out and injured on the floor…And I think in time cooler heads did prevail amd I give the Page officials credit for that…

There was no ill will going on in there last night, just two teams playing hard and trying to get the big win….

That boys game was one for the barn-buring crowd as well and the defense was at as high, or higher level than the offense last night….We talked about the shots that were blocked and you had all kinds of defensive calls in this game….Like we stated earlier, Beejay Pittman has really stepped up his game for Dudley and as most of the big men got in foul trouble last night, Issac Brunson jumped on to the scene for Dudley…Khalil Vance got into foul trouble and had to sit down…Yuau Shol had to spend time on the bench with fouls for Dudley…For Page, Xavier Hill-Mais got hit early, then Jeremy Harris would be out of the lineup, as it was mentioned somewhere, the freshman David Funderburg came in and gave the Pirates a lift with three points off of the bench as a freshman, but he got hit with fouls just like his Pirate post teammates…Even guard Jalen Gavin was forced to sit down after fouling out, on this his senior night of all things…The fouls they were a flying that is for sure…

Still a very hard fought basketball game by these two very good boys basketball teams…Dudley got good point production and good minutes from their freshman Hendon Hooker and he had a big block..The kid is 6’4 and he is starting to play like 6’4….Simeon Gatling and Brion Seagraves also gave Dudley good minutes….The Melton kid for Page is starting to see more playing time as the year rolls on…

The blocks, the defense, the score was low at 57-56 and that was due to defense, or some might say that the officials were calling the game so tight the boys could never open up and get going and find their flow/their rhythm..Depends on how you slice it I guess….Graves and Eaves had steady nights for Page, but for both teams, the ball-handling did get out of hand at times…Two late timeouts called by the coaches in the last minute and when Dudley had the ball and the lead with 6.8 seconds to go, Page got the steal on the inbounds, but when Page took possession with 3.2 seconds to play, the pass from Graves to Harris got loose and as the ball was on the floor it ended up in the hands of Yuau Shol from Dudley and the clock ran out…..

You had all kinds of wild calls and plays in that game last night and a good job turned in by both coaches, as they were on the officials demanding to know what was going on, on each and every call….

Hope to see a couple more like these two games real soon….

More kudos to Kara Shutt and to Grimsley coach Tina Gunn from the Grimsley at Southeast Guilford game last night….Shutt was able to take the court with her injured foot and with a boot on that foot and take and make a two-point basket and then she nailed a free throw to give her(Shutt) 1,000 points for her SEG Falcon career…She was just three points shy of the 1,000 mark, when she broke her foot around 5-6 weeks ago….Coach Gunn made sure Shutt got a good shot at her mark and again Kudos to Coach Gunn for working to make this happen and Kudos to Shutt for giving this a shot and for ending her Senior Night with 1,000 points as a Southeast Guilford Falcon…..