SILER CITY — In a hard-fought contest that featured nine lead changes besides four ties, Austin Biggs’ layup with 2.3 seconds left provided the winning margin as Wheatmore overcame a four-point deficit with under three minutes remaining to spoil Jordan-Matthews’ Senior Night while escaping John Phillips Court with a 56-54 PAC 7 2A Conference triumph over the Jets Tuesday evening.
Completing a sweep of the season series, the Warriors even their league record at 5-5 while improving to 13-9 overall, whereas J-M plummeted to 3-8 in the conference and 7-15 for the year.
Wheatmore placed four starters in double figures, led by Biggs’ 18 points, while Zach Berrier registered 13 points, Jake Tuggle contributed 11 and Matt Craddock added 10. The Warriors connected on 62 percent (23-of-37) of their field goal attempts and held a 22-19 rebounding advantage while committing 18 turnovers.
Lanice Hedgepeth came off the bench to lead the Jets with 14 points and Camden Fuquay finished with 11 as J-M shot 45 percent (22-of-49) from the floor while turning the ball over a dozen times.
“Austin Biggs gave us a big inside presence tonight, and we always want to give him a lot of touches in the paint,” said Wheatmore coach Doug Tuggle. “But this is an unselfish group of guys who play on the same page and like to share the ball to find the open man, as that’s an integral part of our game.
“After having the lead most of the night we eventually fell behind by four down the stretch,” said Tuggle, “but I was proud how we didn’t fold and instead battled back to pull out a victory. Defensively we were comfortable in our 2-3 zone until J-M began hitting some three-pointers in the fourth quarter, which caused us to go man-to-man to put more pressure on the ball and force some big turnovers that aided our comeback.”
Jordan-Matthews’ coach Rodney Wiley remarked despite what he felt was a good defensive effort on the part of his team, the Jets used a lot of energy fighting uphill a large portion of the night.
“I thought we pressured Wheatmore real well and wore them down, especially on the perimeter as we held them to only four three-pointers after they hit 12 treys against us at their place,” noted Wiley. “I like the patience we showed against their zone to get good looks at the basket, while we wanted to get the ball in Camden’s hands down the stretch to attack more inside. A big key that helped us take the lead in the fourth quarter was pushing the ball into the paint and getting Wheatmore to collapse on defense while we made extra passes to get some open outside shots.”
With Berrier and Tuggle combining for nine points in the initial stanza, the Warriors never trailed while forging a 14-10 advantage after one period before the Jets grabbed their first lead at 18-17 following Huston Causey’s trey from the right wing with 5:32 to go in the second quarter.
But Wheatmore reclaimed the advantage 19 seconds later on Berrier’s layup and went up by as much as five (24-19) on Craddock’s fast break layup with 4:24 left in the frame prior to carrying a 28-25 lead into intermission.
After the advantage went back and forth over the first four minutes of the third stanza, the Warriors surged to a 41-34 lead on Berrier’s trey from the left wing with 2:08 remaining in the period before a Hedgepeth free throw and layup cut the margin to four by the end of the quarter.
With Wheatmore clinging to s 48-45 advantage with five minutes to play, Fuquay scored all of J-M’s points during a 7-0 run over the next two-plus minutes that vaulted Jordan-Matthews into a 52-48 lead with 2:49 left in the contest.
But a 6-0 Warriors’ burst then put Wheatmore back on top prior to the Jets’ Jayden Davis tallying a layup to tie the count at 54-all with 41.2 seconds to go, setting the stage for Biggs’ deciding bucket as time was about to expire.