Cool encouraged despite Ads losing big late lead
Admirals 46
Runnin' Rebels 49
KNOXVILLE — Though disappointed his Farragut basketball team lost a 43-30 lead with less than six minutes to play, falling 49-46 at West thanks to an avalanche of late turnovers, head coach Chris Cool emphasized he actually was encouraged by what happened Friday night, Dec. 16.
“That’s a game we could have had. … But to have this team right here [West] with 30 points with [six] minutes to go, I told the kids ‘I’m extremely, extremely proud and hopeful of what we can do this year,’” said Cool, whose team fell to 3-5 overall, 1-3 in District 4-AAA. The Runnin'’ Rebels improved to 9-3, 3-1.
“To me, [West] is a great basketball team.”
“… After losing to Harriman by 30, to William Blount by 25 and to Bearden by 27, I just made a decision we’re going to go with the five best defenders,” Cool added about Nick Rogers, Elijah Thomas, Ethan Sherrill, Chance Bolen and Jaden Gibbs. “I told our kids, ‘we’ve got to keep the games in the 30s and 40s if we want to have a chance to win.’”
About his 1-3-1 zone defense, “Really, Elijah Thomas is the guy that’s been making it go,” Cool said about the 5-foot-11 senior post. “He hustles from side-to-side, no three-point shots are open. He may have given up one tonight. And because of his constant pressure, our opposite wings can gamble and get some steals. I think Nick had four or five of those for lay-ups.”
Cool also added Luke Moeller, a junior post, as one of “our six best defenders.”
Behind Rogers, FHS senior star guard who led all scorers with 21 points, the Ads erased an early 12-2 Runnin’ Rebels lead to go up 23-18 at halftime.
“We just started getting stops, really playing defense. I think our defense led to our offense getting steals,” Rogers said.
About his shortage of late-game ballhandlers, “unfortunately, with those five best defenders, I’ve got three posts out there,” Cool said. “I’m going to have to live with that. We’re just going to have to work on it. … Everybody out there made turnovers.”
“They started running that 2-3 trap on us and that really gave us problems,” Bolen, a 6-foot-1, 232-pound senior post with scored eight, said. “And their press, at the end, gave us problems.”
“Farragut had a great gameplan,” West head coach Chris Kesler said. “We kind of forced them into scramble mode late, got a chance to speed them up.”
