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Senior night festivities inside Brooks Gym Monday night saw the Junior Bucs and Junior Lady Bucs sweep Tri-Cities Christian.

University High took the boys' game 72-55 after the girls' game was a 52-15 rout.

HARLESS SHINES ON SENIOR NIGHT

Senior Joseph Harless picked the second quarter for his outburst. The 1,000-point career scorer added 14 points in the second quarter. That output helped the Junior Bucs to a 39-31 lead at the break. Harless finished with 20 points.

FIRST QUARTER GOES TO JUNIOR BUCS

University High had a battle for the first portion of the contest. Charlie Vargo knocked down a 3-pointer five minutes into the game for the 14-11 lead. That advantage would remain for the Junior Bucs the rest of the night. Kaleb Meredith got eight of his game-best 22 points in the opening quarter.

STRONG SECOND HALF SPURS JUNIOR BUCS

University High scored the first nine points in a two-minute span to seize control. Senior A.J. Simerly had four of his seven points in that stretch. Eventually the Junior Bucs led 55-33 at one point in the third. Marshall Fleenor helped the home side with half of his 10 points for the game in the stretch to make the game a 22-point margin.

TCCS DOES NOT GO QUIETLY

Isaac Hatfield did his part to bring the Eagles back. He got nine of his team-high 17 points in the final quarter. Near the middle of the fourth the rally had TCCS within nine, at 57-48. University High pushed the margin back out to 16 with two minutes left thanks to four points from Meredith in a stretch.

Girls

University High 52, Tri-Cities Christian 15

University High proved to be too much from the start in the opening game. The Junior Lady Bucs led 15-3 after a quarter and 34-6 at halftime. Gracie Crabtree scored 10 of her 12 points in the first half. Sarah Fisher also had a 12-point game for the winning side. Senior Abby Benton poured in nine points while fellow senior Ashley Daniel had two points.

It was the second time this season that University High reached 50 points. The other was in a 65-20 win over Tri-Cities Christian last month.

UP NEXT

Both squads from University High will play Unaka in Friday's opening round of the District 1-A Tournament to be played at Daniel Boone. The girls' contest will be at 7 p.m. followed by the boys' game. Friday's winners move into Saturday's semifinals and earn a spot in the Region 1-A Tournament as well.

Rice hopes to help Lady Bucs create a winning culture
By Dave Ongie

Herman Rice was able to build a winning program at the middle school level. Now he's hoping to translate that winning culture to the high school level.

Rice is beginning his first season at the helm of University High's varsity girls basketball team after engineering a dramatic turnaround at the middle-school level.

"The middle school program, when we took it over three years ago, it hadn't been very successful," Rice said. "We went undefeated in the conference last year. It took three years, but we built that program up. We hope we can do the same thing here."

When Rice looks at the players on his team this season, he sees a lot of the key ingredients for success.

"They are great kids," he said. "They want to win. They want to get better. We'll give them everything we've got to get them there."

The Lady Bucs will be young this season. Abby Benton, a 5-9 forward, and Sarah Robinson, a 5-6 guard, are the only seniors on the roster. Benton will be counted on to provide leadership and production while Robinson works on making the transition from soccer to basketball. Robinson is a standout on the soccer pitch, but hasn't played basketball since middle school.

Gracie Crabtree, Callie Newberry, Bekah Rice and Sarah Fisher – all juniors – are expected to join Benton in the starting lineup. Rice said his lineup will be guard-heavy, and he's hoping to use pressure defense to generate easy offense.

"We're going to have to be a really strong defensive team," he said. "We're not going to be able to pound it inside a lot. Abby does a great job, but our other posts are really young."

ELIZABETHTON — Brayden Sams put Happy Valley in position to win and Noah Stevens finished it off on Monday night at Bayless Gym.

Sams scored Happy Valley's first 11 points of the final period and Stevens scored the last 11 to lead the Warriors to a 74-65 boys' basketball win over University High at Bayless Gym.

Happy Valley won 58-20 in an earlier girls' contest.

Sams and Stevens each ended with 22 points overall as the Warriors rallied from a 15-point, first-half deficit for the victory.

"The first half, we were both cold," Sams said. "The second half, we started hitting our layups and then we moved to the outside shots. We both had the 22 at the end of the night, but it was a good team effort. Luke Roberts came off the bench and gave us some good minutes. Bryce (Carter) played good defense with his hands straight up and not fouling. It was just a good team win."

Joseph Harless scored a game-high 23 points and Marshall Fleenor added 15 for the Bucs, who also saw Caleb Meredith hit double figures with a dozen points.

"I thought our effort was outstanding and our kids played exceptionally hard," University High coach Justin Penley said. "Some nights the ball just doesn't go in the bucket. That's what happened to us late. We had some good looks at it, but give Happy Valley a lot of credit. They made a lot of big shots every time we made a run at them. But if we play like that night in and night out, we will win some games."

Happy Valley coach Chuck Babb was glad how his team had a balanced effort of 10 points by Jake Surcey, nine from Carter and eight from Kevin Whitaker. He especially liked the efforts of Sams and Stevens in the deciding moments.

"Noah got upset early in the game and went in a shell a little bit," Babb said. "I had to get on him and tell him to get tough. And he did. He played outstanding on defense with seven steals, and he and Brayden made some big shots down the stretch. Our shot selection wasn't what we needed in the first half and we got in a big hole. But, we made some adjustments at halftime, and our kids didn't quit when we got down. That's a credit to them, how they kept battling."

GIRLS

Happy Valley 58, University High 20

The Lady Warriors led just 12-10 at the end of one quarter, but outscored the Lady Bucs 40-6 over the next two quarters to romp to the big win.

"We missed a lot of easy shots in the first quarter, but then we got rolling," Happy Valley coach Larry Abel Jr. said. "This team, our offense comes from our defense, and it did again tonight."

Adrienne Henegar led the way with 15 points, followed by Kate Roberts with 10 points. Tiana Long added seven, including a go-ahead basket at the buzzer at the end of the first quarter.

Sarah Fisher had 12 points, nine of them coming behind the 3-point line to lead University High.