East Hamilton's Cameron Montgomery (2) plays defense. The Tyner Rams visited the East Hamilton Hurricanes in TSSAA basketball action on January 19, 2018.
East Hamilton's Sam Randolph (5) dribbles up the court. The Tyner Rams visited the East Hamilton Hurricanes in TSSAA basketball action on January 19, 2018.Cleveland's boys already had wrapped up the District 5-AAA high school basketball regular-season championship and the accompanying No. 1 seeding for the district tournament before playing Thursday at East Hamilton. But no one could tell.
The Blue Raiders looked like a motivated bunch as they took apart the Hurricanes, 83-65, to finish the district regular season unbeaten.
After the game, and between bites of a piece of the large cookie cake that was provided for his player Dionte Ware's birthday, Cleveland coach Jason McCowan confessed that his team did have a little extra motivation. It had less to do with numbers, although the Blue Raiders reached some meaningful ones by winning.
"It's my job to help get these guys somewhere they can't get on their own and to motivate them," McCowan said. "Yes, 12-0 was important. Getting our 20th win was important. But I gave them a little extra motivation. I told them if we win, I'd give them Friday and Saturday off and they wouldn't have to come back until Sunday. They're high school kids. Sometimes we forget about that. And we wanted Dionte Ware to have a good birthday."
The Hurricanes' last lead over Cleveland (20-3), the No. 5-ranked team in the Associated Press state poll, was 13-12. The Blue Raiders' halftime lead was 10, but it was the 12-5 run to start the third quarter that made it 52-35 and put them firmly in control.
The Blue Raiders had half of their 10 3-point goals in the third period. They also had their fastbreak working, which led to them scoring 20 or more points in three of the quarters and 17 in the second.
Another key was that East Hamilton point guard Justin Dozier, who on Wednesday was voted the district's most valuable player, was limited to four points.
"I thought it was big the way we started off the second half," McCowan said. "We were making (Dozier) try to make as tough of points as he could. We'd pick him up full-court, then we'd back off. We gave them different looks and made them take some tough 2s. That led to some runouts for us and some easy offense."
East Hamilton interim coach Zach Roddenberry had other ideas, but they were difficult to pull off.
"Our plan was to play half-court offense," Roddenberry said. "We can go up and down the floor. We could run with them. But they do it extremely well, so we tried to get them out of it. It's easier to say than to do."
Ware led Cleveland with 24 points. Mullek Bradford scored 18, Deontae Davis had 17 and JaCobi Wood contributed 10.
East Hamilton (19-6, 7-3) got 14 points each from Andrew Williams and Cam Montgomery and 12 from DaVae Hughley.
The Hurricanes could still end up the No. 2-seeded team in the district tournament. The next team standing in their way is rival Ooltewah.
"We've got two games left. If we win one of them, we clinch the second spot," Roddenberry said. "It's senior night, and it's Ooltewah. The kids are going to be fired up."
Contact Kelley Smiddie at ksmiddie@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6653. Follow him on Twitter @KelleySmiddie.