COVID resets schedules
There are changes this week to area high school basketball schedules as Anderson County’s High School boys team is quarantined for two weeks due to COVID-19 exposure.
While Anderson County was supposed to play Central, Clinton, and Halls in the coming days, the Central and Clinton games will still take place on their scheduled days (Dec. 1 for Central and Dec. 4 for Clinton), but will be only girls varsity games. The Halls game, which was originally scheduled for Dec. 8, will be moved to Dec. 9 to give the Mavs a day to practice after coming back.
Derek Wallace, head coach of the boys, said they’re trying to reschedule things and get everything they can worked out.
“We’re playing the Clinton boys tentatively on Sunday, Dec. 13,” he said. “The JV Boys will be at 1:30 and the varsity boys at 3. I still have to confirm that with the officials. We’re allowed back on Dec. 8, so we moved the Halls game back a day so we could at least have one day to practice. We practice on the eighth and then we play pretty much every other day until Christmas. It’s going to be a busy month.”
Wallace also reminds everyone that there will be no tickets sold at the gate this Friday.
“All of our home game tickets are on Ticket Spicket (ticketspicket.com) under Anderson County,” he said. “There will be no tickets sold at the game and quantities are limited. After Friday, they’ll decide if we need to cut down our attendance even more or not. Central Office is getting more heavily involved with our attendance policy. Not that we weren’t doing a good job with it, but they’re trying to be more involved.”
The Clinton boys, meanwhile, have picked up Jellico High School to replace their Friday game against Anderson County. That game will take place at Clinton.
Clinton and Jellico have an oddly storied relationship, according to Clinton Coach Chris Lockard, and they’re expecting a good game.
“I have a good connection with their coach,” Lockard said.
“That’s where my dad played high school ball, so we try to play now and again. They have a good team this year and they were trying to find a game. We had one open slot. It should be a pretty good game this year, too. They’ve got a good team this year, and their head coach is a heck of a guy.
“We played there last year,” Lockard said. “They had one kid get like 40 points on us, but we ended up winning by 15 or 16.
“With COVID, everybody is searching for games and we always enjoy playing them. We’re just trying to get the kids as many games as we can.”
The Dragons played Karns on Tuesday, Dec. 1, and will play Powell on Tuesday, Dec. 8, with Lockard expecting hard games against both.
“Karns is tomorrow, and they’re loaded,” Lockard said Monday.
“They have some really good athletes and score extremely well off the bounce, and any teams that can do that make it a really tough defensive struggle,” he said. “They have really good guard play, which is also our strength, and they have a couple guys inside that will give us some trouble. Tyler Morgan has been doing an outstanding job outside for us, as has Trace Thackerson, but those two will have their hands full.
“Lane Harrison will hopefully be able to play against Karns, but he took a pretty rough fall against Gatlinburg-Pittman, so he’s playing it day to day,” Lockard said. “Joshua Keith gave us some good defensive minutes, too. Our depth is young, but our whole team is young. We have to learn how to play through mistakes, and teams like Karns and Powell can really capitalize on those mistakes.”
Lockard said both teams are strong, especially this early.
“They’re both going to be struggles,” he said. “I think both of them are two of the best teams in the our district, and you know, it’s two games that if you can win, really give you an advantage as the rest of the district play goes forward. Both are bigger schools, so they tend to have a few bigger, stronger players than [we do], and both have more seniors than we do. Then again, we don’t have any seniors, so that’s not hard to do. Powell has more returning experience than Karns does. I would honestly say that Powell, especially this early in the season, would have to be picked as one of the top three teams in our league. They’re very capable of winning the district.”