GOOD HOPE, Ala.- West Point’s 8th grade boys team won the Cullman County middle school boys tournament over Good Hope on Saturday, 54-41. The win was fueled by a stellar performance by the Warriors’ Colt Ashley, who scored a game-high 20 points and added nine rebounds and a pair of assists.
Opening the game, Good Hope forward Aiden McGill scored the first three Raiders’ baskets, pushing them out to an early 6-3 lead. Then, the first of Ashley’s buckets pulled the Warriors in front. Closing out the first quarter was a buzzer beating three from Warriors’ guard Trey Thompson to put them up 11-10. Thompson would go on to finish the game with 11 points and an assist.
The second quarter saw the teams play even, with Warriors’ forward Karson Currington coming off the bench and going back and forth from three with Good Hope’s Elijah Bailey. Currington scored all eight of his points in the second quarter. Like the Warriors in the first, Good Hope would hit a big three pointer to close out the second quarter, but they still trailed 23-21 going into halftime. The much-needed deep ball came from the Raiders’ Aiden Fite, who put up a gritty 11 point, five assist and three steal performance before leaving the game late after suffering an injury on a screen.
“Good Hope played us hard, they came out punching and we didn’t handle it well early but I thought we played a lot better in the second. We matched their physicality, which we didn’t do very well in the first, but that’s what we’ve been built on all year,” Warriors’ head coach Tyler White said.
The Warriors opened the second half on an 8-2 run, and slowly started to pull away from the Raiders. Fite and Ashley exchanged buckets, but West Point went into the final period with a 38-29 lead.
In the fourth, while fighting for a ball, Ashley took an elbow to the face and with blood dripping from his face, he left the game. He’d come back in not much later, though, and help the team hold off the Raiders who’d gotten back within six points late in the game. Thompson went on to nail a pair of shots from beyond the arc and Ashley, with a bloody nose stuffed with tissue, capped off the win with an acrobatic layup.
“That kid is a man. He is one of the toughest kids you’ll ever meet, that’s two games this tournament he’s gotten his nose busted and he’s off the court for 30 seconds, he plugs it up and he’s fighting me on the bench to get back into the game. He’s as tough as they come, sometimes he’s in the shadow of our really good guard group but without him this team is not what they are. He’s an unbelievable kid and an unbelievable ball player,” White said on Ashley’s performance.
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