Golden Hurricane defeats Cedar Ridge Timberwolves, 61-27

Delta Digital News Service

Thursday, Nov. 30, 2023

Brayden Morse | Sports Editor

JONESBORO, Ark. – Day one of the 38th annual Barry Pruitt Hurricane Classic is complete, with wins from Jonesboro, Rossview, Bartlett and Fayetteville on Thursday night at Don Riggs Hurricane Gymnasium to move on to the winner’s bracket.

The Jonesboro Golden Hurricane defeated the Cedar Ridge Timberwolves 61-27. 

Jonesboro guard Chris Stacy led the team in scoring with 14 points, and led the team with three, three-pointers in the third quarter. Two of the three-pointers were on back-to-back possessions to increase the Golden Hurricanes’ lead.

Jonesboro head coach Wes Swift shared his thoughts on Stacy’s performance.

“He’s a knock down shooter. We need him to stretch the floor. He played a nice role in that third quarter,” Swift said.

The score was 23-14 at halftime, with the Golden Hurricane leading. Coach Swift felt like the score was too close of a margin and needed to play better on both sides of the ball.

“With the score at halftime, we can work on the offense against the one-three-one. We didn’t have a lot of points at halftime and they (Cedar Ridge) do a really good job on their one-three-one. We wanted to play inside out and they did a good job of allowing us to get the ball in the paint,” Swift said. 

“With the score at halftime, we can work on the offense against the one-three-one. We didn’t have a lot of points at halftime and they (Cedar Ridge) do a really good job on their one-three-one. We wanted to play inside out and they did a good job of allowing us to get the ball in the paint,”

Jonesboro head coach Wes Swift

Swift also had some comments about his defense in the first half.

“We didn’t press and we thought we could press them. We felt like we needed to, to get some easy buckets and try to stretch that lead out a little bit. I thought we had a really good third quarter once we turned the heat up a little bit,” Swift said. 

The Golden Hurricane play the Rossview Hawks (Rossview, TN) on Friday night at 7 p.m. while Cedar Ridge plays the Nettleton Raiders on Friday at 4 p.m.

The Hawks defeated the Nettleton Raiders 54-53, as the Raiders shot a buzzer-beater three-pointer and hoped for a foul for an and-one.

Nettleton fought hard all game, while being down by eight points with two minutes left in the game and coming back. The Raiders would of course minimize that lead with a couple three-pointers and fouls, but failed to make all of their free-throws. 

Nettleton head coach Bubba Deaton expressed his thoughts on the loss and some positive and negative takeaways.

“We did some good things. We’ve got a lot of things to improve on. We didn’t play very well in the first half offensively. Didn’t get stops in the second half. To be down eight with two minutes left and give ourselves a chance, shows some grit. Probably should’ve gone to the press a little earlier. We shared the ball and we missed some shots that we normally take,” Deaton said. 

The Bartlett Bulldogs (Bartlett, TN) defeated the Osceola Seminoles 78-34. Bartlett guard and Arkansas State signee R’Chaun King scored nine points in the win.

The Fayetteville Bulldogs beat the West Memphis Blue Devils 71-43. The Bulldogs will play Bartlett on Friday night at 8:30 p.m. Osceola will play West Memphis on Friday at 5:30 p.m.

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Note: Photos by DDNS Staff Photographer Atsuki Ohbuchi