Photo by Amy Smotherman-Burgess/Knoxville News Sentinel
Chattanooga School of Arts and Sciences’ head coach Mark Dragoo talks with player Jackson Lenoir during a timeout in the game against Harriman at the TSSAA state quarterfinal game at Middle Tennessee State University on Wednesday, March 16, 2010.Mark Dragoo had to look around more than once during the first half of the Class A sectional basketball game Monday night. The schedule said Dragoo and his Arts & Sciences Patriots were playing at home, but the veteran coach, after watching the first few minutes against feisty Friendship Christian, wasn’t so sure.
After a sloppy, cold-shooting first half, though, CSAS put its total game together and rolled to a 66-45 win, earning a spot in the quarterfinals in Murfreesboro next week.
“You would have thought we were playing on the road the way we were playing,” Dragoo said of his team’s narrow 20-17 halftime lead. “The downside to playing at home, I think, is that the atmosphere sometimes gets the kids carried away a bit, so you have to pull them back some.
“We didn’t rebound well, defend well or shoot well in the first half, but still we were ahead. I told them if we took care of those things in the second half we would win, and they did.”
The Patriots (28-4), jacked up by a standing-room-only crowd that included several hundred Friendship fans, shot wild 3-pointers on their first four possessions. They didn’t shoot another one in the first half, instead focusing on using Alex Stallion’s superior playmaking and strong finishes by Sharif Cobb and Brandon Woodruff to lead by 10 midway through the second period.