With three State tournament wins in two seasons, Hornets head coach Mike Abrahamson has been more successful in post season since any at Bryant since the 1980’s.
In 2012, the Hornets won twice and surprised many in the state by reaching the semifinals before losing to eventual champion Little Rock Hall, featuring star Bobby Portis.
In 2013, Bryant knocked out host Cabot and reached the quarterfinals before falling to eventual champ North Little Rock.
This year, the Hornets, a four seed from the West Conference, opens against the West Memphis Blue Devils, seeded fifth in the Central, on Thursday at 2:30 p.m., at Buzz Bolding Arena at Conway High School.
(West Memphis was beaten by North Little Rock as well last year in a semifinal game.)
Asked about what might be the key to his teams’ unprecedented post-season success, Abrahamson replied, “I just tell our guys, we don’t want to go into this thing tight. We want to go into it with loose but business-like personalities.
“We’ll be more inclined to take a few chances whereas a lot of other teams tighten up and want to be perfect,” he noted. “They don’t want to make any mistakes. We know we’re going to make mistakes. Will that win us the game? I don’t know. But I think it has contributed to our success the last two years. Not that we’re just going to go in here and wing it, just have fun no matter what happens. That’s not it. We’re just not going to be tight. We’re going to go in there and try to play our best.”
They’ll have to do it without their top scorer this season. Senior guard C.J. Rainey suffered a broken ankle prior to the team’s final regular-season game at El Dorado on Feb. 25, a 71-61 loss on Senior Night for the Wildcats.
“We’re a new team with the loss of C.J.,” the coach acknowledged. “But I think they’re responding well, practicing well. I didn’t think we played all that bad at El Dorado. Hopefully, that was a good thing moving forward into State, that the State tournament wasn’t our first game missing such a key piece.
“I think everybody has accepted a role of increasing the energy that we practice with and the communication and wanting a bigger role to collectively make up for his 18.5 points a game,” he added.
“That being said, we’re playing a really good West Memphis team,” Abrahamson stated. “They’ve got some big guys, one in particular, that they want to throw it in to every chance they get. They’ll run some high-low stuff. They’re athletic but if they don’t get anything in transition they really want to slow things down and make sure they get it to the big guy. And he’s tough.
“They’ve got a four man that’s pretty big too,” he continued. “It’s going to be tough to rebound but that’s been an issue all year. I think this whole season our first-shot defense has been pretty good most games. It’s just been the rebounding and at times, like at El Dorado, we have trouble finishing around the basket. I thought the first half against El Dorado we missed a ton of shots right there. We did better in the second half but we’d dug ourselves a hole that we couldn’t quite get out of even though we cut it to 3 and had a chance to maybe cut it to 1.”
The Hornets’ tallest players are senior starters Cedarrian Crosby and Greyson Giles at 6-3. Junior Wesley Peters, though 6-1, was a force on the boards during the Hornets’ second-half run at El Dorado.
At guard, sophomore Kevin Hunt has become a reliable playmaker and freshmen Romen Martin and Desmond Duckworth have played beyond their years.
Seniors Rickey Buchanan and Caleb Strain have helped off the bench this year but Strain has been slowed by injury recently. Sophomore Kris Croom has helped off the bench at times as well.
“I think, with this team, if we can score early in the game and not get in a hole, we’ll have a chance the whole game,” Abrahamson said. “If we’re down, it’s going to be tough to come back against (West Memphis). And, if we’re up, they can turn it on a little bit so we’d have to hold them off. But I think our best chance is to really get off to a good start. We play better that way. There’s only been one time this year, the first Benton game, where we had an early lead that we let get away. And there’s only one time we’ve come back and won, and that was against Texarkana here at home.”
West Memphis was the opponent against whom Abrahamson made his debut at Bryant in a benefit game in 2011.
CLASS 7A STATE TOURNAMENT
At Buzz Bolding Arena, Conway High School
Boys
Thursday, March 6
Game 2 — Bryant (11-14) (West 4) vs. West Memphis (12-14) (Central 5), 2:30 p.m.
Game 4 — Cabot (16-10) (Central 3) vs. Rogers Heritage (16-11) (West 6), 5:30 p.m.
Game 6 — Conway (15-9) (Central 4) vs. Fayetteville (14-13) (West 5), 8:30 p.m.
Friday, March 7
Game 8 — Van Buren (20-5) (West 3) vs. Little Rock Central (6-19) (Central 6), 2:30 p.m.
Game 10 — North Little Rock (23-2) (Central 1) vs. game 2 winner, 5:30 p.m.
Game 12 — Bentonville (18-5) (West 2) vs. game 4 winner, 8:30 p.m.
Saturday, March 8
Game 14 — Springdale (20-5) (West 1) vs. game 6 winner, 5:30 p.m.
Game 16 — Fort Smith Northside (19-8) (Central 2) vs. game 8 winner, 8:30 p.m.
Monday, March 10
Game 18 — Game 10 winner vs. game 12 winner, 1:30 p.m.
Game 20 — Game 14 winner vs. game 16 winner, 7:30 p.m.
