LOUDON, Tenn. – It will be an all-Chattanooga affair to settle the 2019 Region 3-AA boys’ basketball championship.
Brainerd rallied from a double-digit second-half deficit to upset second-ranked Sweetwater 70-65, snapping the Wildcats’ 14-game winning streak in the first of two semifinals Tuesday evening at Loudon High School. Howard followed with a slight upset of its own, knocking off Tyner 63-51 after having lost to the Rams twice earlier in the season, including in last week’s district tournament.
That sets up a third meeting between rivals Brainerd and Howard, this time to decide the region championship and home-court advantage for next Monday’s state sectional round. Because the two finalists are from Chattanooga, the region title game will be moved to Signal Mountain on Thursday at 7 p.m.
“We’ve felt like we’ve been overlooked, like nobody expected much out of this team all season, and they played like they had something to prove,” first-year Howard coach James Talley said. “It will be a dogfight Thursday. They know us and we know them, so it will just be a matter of who wants it the most.”
‘ Brainerd 70, Sweetwater 65: The Panthers trailed for all but one minute of the first half and by 12 with 5:09 left in the third quarter before cutting the deficit in half with 1:35 to go in the period.