Thanks to a second-half burst, the Class 6A defending champion Chattahoochee Cougars fended off a familiar rival Wednesday at home, beating the Pope Greyhounds 68-60 in the first round of the playoffs.
The No. 3 Cougars (21-3), a No. 1 seed out of Region 7, will host Region 8 No. 3 seed Buford — the Wolves defeated Alexander 66-64 on the road Wednesday — in the second round on either Friday or Saturday. The Greyhounds (16-13), a No. 4 seed from Region 6, gave their former region opponents a stiff opening-round challenge and led 33-30 at halftime.
However, the Cougars would open the third quarter on a 11-0 run and never look back. Jordan Brown (25 points) and AJ White (23 points including five 3-pointers) led the way.
Cougars coach Chris Short said they used halftime to come up with a plan to slow the Greyhounds offensively, which in turn would get their offense going.
“We made a couple of tweaks offensively to get some better shots,” Short said. “And really, the tweak was defensively. We talked a lot about the way (Greyhounds point guard) Will Kolker passes the basketball, and being one of the better passers in the state. We just felt like we needed to get a little more ball pressure, contest the shot and the pass and get more deflections, which led to some easy points on the other end.”
The Greyhounds led by as many as six in the second quarter and, after falling behind by eight to start the second half, they hit two quick 3-pointers to keep the game close and would trail 52-46 at after three quarters. They would pull to within 60-56 with 2:54 remaining but wouldn’t make another field goal until 16.8 seconds remaining — a 3-pointer to make it 66-60.
While Pope was in its scoring drought, the Cougars went 6-for-6 from the line to take a double-digit lead for the first time, 66-56 with 28.5 seconds remaining.
Short said he wasn’t surprised to get a tough game to start the playoffs, and that it’s different playing as defending champions versus being underdogs. The Cougars beat Lanier 69-66 in overtime for the program’s first title in a history that dates to 1991.
“We’ve talked a lot about that all year,” Short said. “There’s people who say we shouldn’t have won that, or that we should have — did we earn some credibility or not? Bottom line is we’ve worked as hard to get that as any other team and we knew coming in this year that there would be a target. So, it’s a little bit different for us because we pride ourselves on being the underdog and having to play with that mentality. Now we’re not that underdog. People are circling us on their schedule so it makes me be better and makes our players execute at a higher level.
“I feel like, in the last three weeks, we’ve been playing our best basketball.”
The Greyhounds have qualified for the playoffs every year since 2013 but are just 3-9 in that span, last winning in 2017 and never having advanced past the second round.
They were led by Kolker’s 16 points.
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