Published Friday, November 13, 2009

East Coweta basketball teams off and running

The Newnan Times-Herald

The pace of the East Coweta Indians' pre-season scrimmage here Thursday night was exactly to head coach Ronnie Vandiver's liking.

"The faster it is the better I like it," he said after his Indians beat the Griffin Bears, 104-90, here in the John Thrower Gym.

The Lady Indians also won their game, 45-43.

"This is the way we're going to have to play to be competitive," Vandiver said. "We won't be able to slow the ball down and be successful."

One thing's for sure. The Indians didn't slow anything down Thursday.

"I think we'll be fun to watch," the coach said. "We played with a lot of enthusiasm which is something else we're going to have to do.

"We played hard and I thought we played well...in spurts."

The Indians came out of the gate gunning, scoring 28 points in the first quarter and were up 52-32 at halftime.

"We didn't show any nervousness out of the chute, that's for sure," Vandiver said.

Brandon Farmer, with 22 points, and Joshua Houston, with 21, paced the Indians while Madarius Gibbs put in 16.

Houston had 11 of his 21 in the first quarter including two three-pointers.

"Our shooters shot well," Vandiver said. "We think Farmer, Houston and Gibbs are capable of scoring a lot of points for us and they did it tonight."

EC dressed out 13 players for the scrimmage and every player scored.

The Indians were 29 of 44 from the free throw line.

"Of course, we haven't proven anything," the coach went on. "This was just a scrimmage. We'll just have to keep working and trying to get better."

It starts counting for real Saturday at McIntosh in the season opener, but for now the Indians have to feel good about what they did Thursday.

As do the Lady Indians.

The EC girls blew out to as much as a 13-point lead in the second quarter and carried an eight-point lead into the fourth period before Griffin staged a comeback.

The Lady Bears had the ball in the closing seconds after the Lady Indians missed the front end of a one-and-one, but couldn't connect what would have been the game-winner at the horn.

"We got off to a great start," said coach Paula Jones of her team's 16-8 lead after the first period.

"And I thought we worked the ball real well, but we've got to get our running legs and we've got to handle the ball a lot better."

Zanna Zackery's free throw with 1:35 to play gave EC a 45-40 led, but Griffin's Jimia Washington sank three at the line with seven seconds to play to cut it to 45-43.

EC's Zackery went to the line with 3.9 left, but missed her shot and the Lady Bears rebounded, but couldn't nail the clincher after a quick time out.

Angelica Zackery led the EC girls with 10 points while Franesa Edwards had eight.