ATHENS—A high school basketball game is made up of four eight-minute quarters, or 32 minutes of actual clock time.  Most teams will not usually score even a basket a minute, though that is not unheard of.

Friday night at the Cedar Shoals gym, Apalachee High School’s boys’ team had two stretches totaling 17 minutes, 10 seconds when it did not score a basket.  That’s 53.7 percent of the time in the game that the Wildcats failed to make a hoop.

From the time Dennis Pritchard sank his team’s only 3-pointer of the game with 54 seconds left in the first quarter until Nelson Gibson scored a hoop with 3:31 left in the third quarter, the Wildcats went 13 minutes and 23 seconds without a field goal.

The ‘Cats had an 18-6 run spanning two quarters and pulled within six points, 41-35, with 5:36 left in the contest, then they went 3:47 without scoring at all and scored only three more points in the game.

The result was a 56-38 Jaguars victory in a subregion 8-AAAA North game, Cedar Shoals’ second straight subregion victory after entering this week with none.

Apalachee suffered its sixth straight loss and fell to 6-16 overall and 1-7 in subregion play.  The Wildcats were to have played Winder-Barrow at the Dogghouse Saturday evening, then will finish the regular season Tuesday when they face Clarke Central in Athens.  Tipoff for that game will be around 7:30 p.m.

Cedar Shoals played a patient, methodical game on offense, using penetration drives and dish-offs to score numerous easy baskets.  The Jaguars connected on 19 of 39 floor shots for 48.7 percent and were deadly with their free throws, sinking 16 of 19 overall (84.2 percent), 11 of 12 (91.7 percent) in the fourth quarter.

Harrison Stephens led Cedar Shoals with 15 points, making all eight of his free throws.  Carl Clemons added 14 points and eight rebounds for the Jaguars while Tray Briscoe and Dontai Robinson each scored nine.

Nelson Gibson was the Wildcats’ leading scorer with seven points.  Three others—John Ansley, DeVaughn Kilgore and Montrellis Farley—tallied six apiece.  The Cats have balance, even when they don’t have much production.

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink,” quoted Apalachee coach Kevin Morris after the game.  “How many layups did we miss down here (under the basket)?  And how long did we go without a basket? I don’t know what we can do.  If we can’t score, we can’t win.

“We’ve got a week (before the region tournament begins) to get it fixed.”

The only lead changes in the game occurred in the opening period, when Apalachee held a couple of three-point leads in the early going, the second at 8-5 with 3:45 left in the initial period.

Stephens’ bucket with 2:55 left technically gave Cedar Shoals the lead for good, but Pritchard’s 3-pointer with 54 seconds left did tie the game at 13-13 and that’s the way the score stood at the end of the quarter.

Cedar Shoals scored the first seven points of the second quarter and the last seven.  In between, Apalachee only got a single free throw from Ansley with 4:22 left before halftime.

Freshman Cameron Blakely missed the front end of a one-and-one situation with 37.7 seconds left, and those were the only free throws the ‘Cats were awarded in the period as Cedar jumped out to a 27-14 halftime spread.

When the ‘Cats finally made a basket in the third quarter, they seemed to like the idea and promptly went on an 11-4 run to cut the Jaguars’ lead to 11, 39-28, heading into the final quarter.

They continued their good fortune in the first part of the fourth quarter, using a 7-2 surge to get within six points with plenty of time left.

The magic (or the offense) left the Wildcats after that and the Jaguars scored 10 straight points on the way to a game-ending 15-3 spree which accounted for the final score.

CEDAR SHOALS 56, APALACHEE BOYS 38
Apalachee               13      1     14     10—38
Cedar Shoals           13    14     12     17—56
Apalachee—John Ansley 2 2-6 6, DeVaughn Kilgore 2 2-2 6, Quincy Gibson 2 0-2 4, Chris Smith 0 4-4 4, Rakim Peters 0 1-2 1, Nelson Gibson 3 1-2 7, Cameron Blakely 0 0-1 0, Montrellis Farley 2 2-2 6, Maurice Dixon 0 1-2 1, Dennis Pritchard 1 0-0 3, Nate Holton 0 0-0 0.  Totals 12-42 13-23 38.
Cedar Shoals—C.D. Simmons 1 2-2 4, Neal Harris 1 0-0 2, Tray Briscoe 4 1-3 9, Carl Clemons 5 4-5 14, Harrison Stephens 3 8-8 15, Chamarcus Pittard 0 1-1 1, Tray Andrews 1 0-0 2, Dontai Robinson 4 0-0 9, James Gordon 0 0-0 0.  Totals 19-39 16-19 56.
3-pointers—Apalachee 1 (Pritchard), Cedar Shoals 2 (Stephens, Robinson).  Rebounds—Apalachee 24 (Kilgore 5), Cedar Shoals 30 (Clemons 8).  Turnovers—Apalachee 16, Cedar Shoals 20.  Personal fouls—Apalachee 8, Cedar Shoals 20.