Highlights: Trey Alexander, Clinton hold off Madison Central 52-44 in season finale
MADISON — The Clinton Arrows have thrived on good guard play this season, and it carried them again in Friday night's regular season-finale win over region foe Madison Central.
Trey Alexander and Kari Hamilton combined for 35 points and the Arrows (18-5) held off a fierce Madison Central rally to win 52-44 before a packed house on Senior Night in the Jungle.
The win didn't change anything in the district standings — Starkville celebrated the No. 1 seed 180 miles away with a 61-59 win over Tupelo, Madison Central held onto the No. 2 seed and Clinton finished third — but it did serve as a preview of two of the best teams in Region 2-7A headed into next week's district tournament at Gluckstadt.
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If Friday's game is any indication of what we can expect from them in the post-season, either team could make a deep playoff run.
Madison Central (17-10) was without its star player, guard Dylan Rowe, who took a game off to recover from a tough fall in a 41-39 loss to Starkville earlier this week. The Jaguars run their whole offense through Rowe, and struggled to score against the Yellowjackets in the final quarter of Wednesday night's loss.
Coach Ben Gardner's squad looked much better Friday, after an extra day to prepare a new game plan. They came out firing in the first quarter, with senior Jackson Payne providing a couple of nifty entry passes to Will Brunnini for easy buckets to provide an early 9-2 lead.
Even after Clinton coach Leonard Taylor called his first timeout to rally the troops, the Jaguars stretched the lead to 17-6 by the end of the first quarter.
At the end of the first quarter, Taylor called his team in for a more one-sided conversation.
"We're a defensive team and we always hang our hat on it," Clinton coach Leonard Taylor said. "We weren't doing a very good job on them early. But sometimes it takes a start like that to get the guys to really buy into what we're doing on that particular night, and we were fortunate enough to be able to overcome the slow start."
The Arrows broke the huddle and got back to basics, forcing a couple of turnovers to spark an 18-0 run to star the second quarter and took a 24-17 lead. Hamilton scored 10 of his 20 points during the streak, Shiloh Freeman hit a big three-pointer and Alexander had five points in the quarter.
Clinton led by 13 points at 31-19 by halftime and stretched it to 14 at 41-28 at the end of the third quarter.
It looked bleak for the Jags, as one of Madison's best rebounders Brunnini fouled out with 52 seconds left in the third.
Still, they had one more run in them.
Senior guard Kennedy Fuquay got hot in the fourth and hit back-to-back three pointers from the proverbial parking lot. The first one cut the Clinton lead to 44-39, and the second one to 46-42 with a little more than a minute left.
But that's as close as Madison could get. With the Jaguars desperate to score and Rowe on the sidelines in a warmup suit, Clinton put together a little 6-2 mini-run over the final minute, with Alexander — surely one of the best players in all of Class 7A — nailing the coffin shut with a couple of free throws.
Alexander transferred to Clinton High after winning a championship at Clinton Christian last season, and he's picked up right where he left off in 2024.
"He's a great guard," Leonard said. "He's strong around the basket, he can knock down the mid-range spot. He knows how to mix it up, and he's a great piece for this team. He compliments what we do so well. We have three of the best guards in the district."
Madison Central coach Ben Gardner said he was encouraged to see his team compete the way they did without Rowe, but that he wasn't surprised to see them come out ready to play on senior night.
"We have a big group of seniors who have been in the program for four years and really created our culture here," Gardner said. "It's a difficult process when you have a guy who leads you in scoring by a significant margin who's out for a ballgame like that. But we had some guys like Kennedy Fuquay who played incredible for us tonight."
Rowe, he added, will be back in the lineup when the Region 2-7A Tournament tips off Monday.
There's an outside chance the two teams will face each other again, but Taylor said the Arrows will have to bring their best no matter what path they draw in the tournament.
"When you are playing one of these region rivals like Madison Central or Starkville, both teams know what the other team wants to do," Taylor said. "It's just a matter of who is going to come down with those 50/50 balls and stick to the defensive plan."
