By Angie Ledbetter

The North Delta Jr. high boys basketball team got a heart breaker when they lost their first game this season Monday night, January 21, to the Tunica Blue Devils by a score of 31-30 in a huge district game.

That put their overall record at 12-1 for the season.

They traveled to Tunica to take on the Jr high Blue Devils and knew ahead of time that it was going to be very tough for them. They had beat the Blue Devils earlier in the season by only 7 points. The Blue Devils were in second place in the district.

Head Coach Brad Wilson said that his team was very upset.

“It was heart breaking for them,” he said. “They don’t like to lose and they will do whatever it takes to win. I have got full confidence that they will bounce back and be ready to play and hopefully we will not get beat again.

“They had a hard night of offensive production,” Wilson continued. “We didn’t really put points on the board. Bryan Nickle, our ball handler got in foul trouble and that hurt us. They were going for full court press and when he got in foul trouble, he sat out for a total of a whole quarter. That really hurt us because he is our best ball handler. That is real important when it comes to breaking a full court press. We had trouble doing that and we had some turnovers. The boys played hard like they always do but we are just having trouble putting points on the board right now.”

The junior high team will remain in first place after this loss.

“We beat them the first time by seven and they beat us by just one point, so that keeps us in first place,” said Wilson. “Plus Tunica lost to West Memphis, so we would have to lose one or two more district games to go to second place.”

Tres Brasell, who played with a broken finger, scored a career high 19 points.

He broke his pinky on Friday and just taped for the game. He had 19 points, and six rebounds.

“So he came up big for us,” Wilson said. “He kept us in the ballgame and I am real proud of how he performed and stepped up like that with a broken finger on his shooting hand.”

Two of North Delta’s last games have been close.

“Last week, we went into overtime and won by only one point,” Wilson said. “We have got to rise to the challenge. I have no doubt that this guys can. These freshman are a bunch on winners and they just win. As bad as it was to lose, it was good to see that it hurt them losing. It bothered them. That proves to a coach that their players care to win or lose and that is a big thing. We didn’t play our best and we missed free throws.”

Wilson said that it was really hard to go undefeated in basketball.

“I had hoped that we would and I thought that we could. You play so many games, two or three a week. It is so hard to play that good every night. This week we have a hard week. We had to go to Desoto last week and to Tunica this week and go to West Memphis next week. The two week stretch is going to be rough especially playing those teams on their own court. It makes a huge difference when you are playing there.”

Scoring 19 points and having his game high career was Tres Brasell. Brasell also had 6 rebounds. Jim Tom Copeland scored 4 points and had 2 rebounds. Corbin Baker added 3 points and had 3 rebounds. Michael Magee had 2 points, 2 steals, and 2 rebounds. Bryan Nickle had 2 points and 2 steals. Matthew Barefoot had 1 rebound and 2 steals. Carson Bailey had 2 rebounds.

The junior high boys were back in action last night when they hosted Winona Christian. Friday’s scheduled game against Delta Academy was rescheduled for Monday due to the weather. The score was not available at press time.