Pioneers

host tournament
By Steve Behr
sports@wataugademocrat.com

After taking some time off, Watauga girls basketball coach Klay Anderson is ready to start the second half of the season.

The Pioneers do that Thursday and Friday at the Watauga Invitational Tournament. They’ll take on West Stokes, beginning around 6 p.m., at Lentz-Eggers Gym. The Watauga boys team does the same at 8 against West Stokes.

Thursday’s tournament opens with the first girls game, which consists of Oak Hill of Louisiana taking on Starmount. It follows with the boys game between the two schools.

Anderson’s team is still smarting from a 51-50 loss to rival Ashe County. What made the loss hurt was the fact Watauga had a good chance to win the game, but blew an 11-point lead.

Anderson said practices went well and the Pioneers have moved on from the loss, at least he thinks so.

“It was an emotional loss,” Anderson said. “The girls were really hurt and it hurt because they believed they should have won the game. But (Avery) fought after being down by 11 and finished the game and for that they deserve a lot of credit.”

Anderson felt good about the fact the Pioneers were able to score 50 points against the Huskies. As long as Watauga keeps up that type of production, Anderson feels they’ll win their share of games.

“For me, it’s about getting over the hump,” Anderson said. “One of the things we need to work on is getting to the free throw line and we have to limit our turnovers. We’re playing decent defense and if we average 50 points, I think we can win a lot of games. But we’ve got to work on taking care of the ball and getting to the foul line.”

Watauga’s boys team is also coming off a loss to Ashe County. The Pioneers (5-4) were buried by a bad third quarter that saw them fall behind and never catch up. Ashe County prevailed 62-55.

David Isaacs scored 14 points, while Zach Greene scored 10. Watauga trailed 24-22 at halftime, but was outscored 25-12 in the third quarter to claim a 49-34 lead.

“I told the players after the game that it’s on us,” Watauga coach Rob Sanders said. “We’ve given them a lot of leeway and expected them to play hard and play smart and I told them after the game that they played hard. We played smart and together in spurts and spurts is not good enough.”