WH Heritage completes season sweep in intra-city matchup
White House Heritage (10-3, 5-0) was able to defeat White House for the second time this season on Friday night with an 82-60 victory.
This was the second consecutive game that the Patriots scored at least 80 points after handing East Robertson a historic 40-point loss on Tuesday.
“Offensively, we’re playing a lot better,” Heritage head coach Carl Miller said. “We’re scoring a lot of points. We just talked about some of the things that we need to clean up defensively. We need to make better decisions at the end of games.
“I felt like at the end of the game we did make good decisions, but, they’re playing well right now. I’m not surprised. It’s just a great group of kids. They work hard; they stick together. The culture’s good which we preach every day.”
Heritage forward Daniel Bale provides an inside scoring presence but also has the ability to score on the outside. Bale scored 23 points Friday night, and even when he is not scoring himself, he can kick out to open shooters. Miller said he is shooting above 70 percent this season. Thirteen games in, that is quite a statistic.
The Patriots are deep as well. They rotate 10 players, and Miller has confidence in each of them to contribute.
“We’ve just got a lot of kids that can score and a lot of kids that can step up,” Miller said. “We rotate 10 right now, and all those kids usually give us really good minutes. Even if somebody’s not having a good night, somebody else will step up and give us good minutes, so I think that’s what makes us who we are.”
For the Patriots it was a meaningful victory in more ways than one. Obviously, defeating their rival Blue Devils always feels good, but picking up another district victory over a contender and maintaining their undefeated district record has postseason implications.
“Every district game is crucial,” Miller said. “We just talked about that. Our goals are set high; our goals are set to win this district, and so we have to go out and play like a championship team every single night. Sometimes that’s hard to do, but you want to finish the district in first place; you want that bye. That bye gives you an automatic birth to the region.”
The flip side of the result almost assures White House that they will likely have to travel in the district tournament. Head coach Caleb Cook said his team has not played their best against their rivals.
“We didn’t play well either time,” Cook said. “Tonight we turned the ball over way too much. We got lost.”
Heritage kept the pressure on White House and forced 18 turnovers. Cook said he was happy with his team’s effort, but that sloppiness will not cut it against the top teams in the district.
“They’re good; they’re deep; they’re experienced,” Cook said. “Hats off to those guys, but I’m proud of our effort, proud of our attitude. We just can’t turn the ball over 18 times and have a chance against, you know, good teams like them.”
As the Blue Devils were coming off the floor after the final buzzer, Cook gave his guys high fives and told them, “We’ll see them again.” If they want to win the district tournament, they may very well have to pick up their first win over the cross-town rival in the same gym.
“I would love to see them again in the tournament because I feel like they’re a good team and they’ll be playing late into the tournament,” Cook said. “If we can see them again late in the tourney, that means that we’ve, you know, that we’ve won some games late in the season, so there’s no reason for us to hang our head now.”
Heritage will host Portland on Monday night. White House will travel to Harpeth.
Box Score:
White House Heritage (82) – Daniel Bale 23, Demontae Teasley 19, Jared Brummett 13, Blake McDonald 8, Taye Francis 6, Ben Branlund 5, Caleb Guisewite 4, Timmy Freel 2
White House (60) – Quad Lucas 18, Ethan Droz 11, Nathan Bowman 9, Caleb Dorris 9, Amarion Lucas 8, Zane Brown 3, Wesley Deakins 2
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