Weekend fast break: West Laurens sweeps Dublin; Raider, Irish boys pick up region wins Friday night

It’s been a drought-breaking kind of week for the West Laurens Raiders, who ended a big one last Tuesday with wins over Howard to record their first home sweep in about two years. They knocked out an even longer one, against perhaps their biggest rival, in a pair of road wins Saturday night that represented their first sweep of neighboring Dublin in close to five. 

West had luck squarely on its side, winning three out of four over a weekend road trip comprised exclusively of games with teams nicknamed Fighting Irish, Friday’s out of 4-AAA rival Aquinas.  

The West Laurens girls, suffering the lone loss of the weekend 40-32 Friday in Augusta, bounced back to take down Dublin 75-59 to win a third game in their last five. The Raider boys ran past Aquinas in a 79-28 rout on the front end of the set, and closed it out with a 72-59 victory Saturday to hand Dublin its first loss of the season, and take their win streak to three.  

Dublin, back at home Friday, split with Southwest Macon to begin the weekend. Its boys handed the top-ranked Patriots their first loss of the season, 57-48. Southwest’s girls defeated the Lady Irish 38-31. 

Both clubs continue their pre-Christmas action with region matchups early this week. West Laurens will host Hephzibah Tuesday night. Dublin visits Northeast Macon on Wednesday. 

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 West Laurens boys head coach Izell Stephens, who along with his assistant Brandon Edmond came up playing on the end of the West Laurens-Dublin basketball rivalry opposite the one where he now coaches, knows well how rare it’s been over the years for the Raiders’ boys teams to come away from the “Dub side” with a win. 

Their last was way back in 2019, for Coach Chuck Hill’s squad against the Irish in their first year under Ben Smith. Before that, West Laurens had won on four other occasions, but none when playing on Dublin’s home court until you get all the way back to the 2014 season, when the Raiders’ head coach was O.J. Hall, and the Irish were led by Paul Williams. 

Saturday’s result, breaking up a nine-game Green and Gold streak in the annual rivalry, will serve as a huge milestone for a West Laurens team off to its best start in nearly as long. 

“These seniors had never beaten Dublin in their high school career, so that was a big challenge in my pregame speech: How do you want your high school legacy to be remembered? Do you want to go out and lose to Dublin all four years, or do you want to change that tonight?” Stephens said. “They went out and performed. We’ve still got some things to work on, but I’m proud of their resilient effort. They worked extremely hard, they never gave up and beat a team that’s undefeated.”

The Lady Raiders had beaten Dublin a bit more recently, with three additional wins scattered between meetings since those the school last swept in 2019. The victory, however, still snapped their own three-game losing streak, which dates back to November of 2022, and served as a similar signature to finish off a week full of confidence-builders for a group of players dominated by underclassmen. 

“We’re a really young team, and we’re still learning how to win, but that was a big one for us tonight,” said West Laurens girls head coach Tyler Rogers. “I’m really proud of the girls. They played hard, played their tails off and got a big win.” 

Sophomore Brooklyn Jackson took over, and dropped a career-best 30 points, to help the Lady Raiders (3-5, 2-2 region 4-AAA) put up a season high in Saturday’s performance. 

Jahalee Snead and Gabby Carswell followed with nine and eight respectively. Maddie Ridgeway had eight. 

The Lady Raiders, out front by just two possessions for most of the first half, outscored Dublin 34-20 in the second to pull away.  

Besides Jackson’s consistent playmaking to bring everything together, a key for West Laurens in its “most complete game to date” was simply taking advantage of opportunities, first and foremost, at the free throw line, where it were a respectable 11-for-20, against Dublin’s rate of 12-of-29. 

In close games this year, the difference for the Lady Raiders has been how well they take care of the basketball, and capitalize on chances to turn a mistake by the other team into scoring. Neither were strong points in their loss to Aquinas the night before. 

“We did a lot better job tonight, but we’re still putting the ball in their hands too many times, and we’re leaving too many points on the board. There were probably 10 or 16 points we left on layups,” Rogers said. “The biggest thing is consistency for us.” 

Dublin’s Zoey Bell took the lead on the Green and Gold side of the ledger with 16. Khalil Maddox had 11 points. Rainna White added eight. 

“Credit to Dublin,” Rogers said. “I know they’re a young team, and Coach (Killins) is doing a good job over there. But our girls came out and played really hard tonight. We got to the loose balls and converted the and-ones we needed to, and we made the shots. It was a great job by the girls, and I’m super proud of them.” 

The boys’ game – a matchup of teams who’ve prided themselves on defense early this season – went back and forth with both offenses making plenty of noise early.  

Dublin came out firing, and set the pace over the first few minutes. But a strong West Laurens finish tied the game back up by the end of the first quarter. The Raiders found their footing on the defensive end in the second, and led the scoring 26-15 the rest of the way to the half. 

The Irish (6-1, 3-0 region) stayed in striking distance, but a full comeback never materialized. 

“We settled in,” Stephens said. “We came out in the second more focused, and increased the defensive intensity. We were able to control a manageable lead throughout the game and pulled out a great program win.” 

West Laurens shot it well from deep, with five players knocking down at least one of the team’s seven 3-pointers. Nas Jones led the scoring with 22 points, and one of them. Omarion Coverson, adding 16, and Dorian Watkins, putting up 10, hit two apiece. 

Dublin’s A.J. Johnson countered with 23-point performance, supported by Javion Harris, Tristian Bell and Jahkeem Marion with nine apiece. 

The Irish, while sharp at the foul line (19-of-24), made only four of their 16 looks from outside. 

The win represents another huge step forward for a West Laurens team that’s been building up to this type of breakthrough in recent games. Though routs of both Howard and Aquinas in the week leading up were huge confidence-builders, this road victory over a rival, which also gets the Raiders’ record back to .500 overall, will carry some special significance as their early-season rise continues. 

“Going into a hostile environment at Dublin gave our guys an opportunity to play in a playoff-style atmosphere and we rose to the occasion,” Stephens said. “Of course, we still have to work on some things and get better at, but the good thing is that all the mistakes are fixable. I challenged the guys before the game that once we get the lead, we need to maintain and increase the lead and we did just that.” 

“We’ve been battle-tested early on, and it showed. Now we’re figuring out how to close games out,” he added. 

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Dublin’s boys, Friday night, handed Southwest its first loss of the year to retain their unbeaten record for the moment.  

Fueled by some early success on defense, the Irish led 13 at the half after scoring 14 each – and holding Southwest to single digits – in the first two quarters, then outpaced the Patriots, with their lead shrinking to no less than 11 points, in the second half.

Dublin’s Johnson held the scoring lead with 19 points, and grabbed six rebounds. Martravious Linder scored 13, and was joined in double figures by Bell, who added 10 and team-highs in rebounds (seven) and assists (four). Marion had six, and Tyrese Robinson chipped in five points and six rebounds. 

Southwest’s top scorers were C.J. Howard, with 20, Brandon Ashley, with 12, and Chase Dupree, with 10. 

Things were slow going for both teams at the start of the girls’ game, which saw just nine total points put on the board in the first eight minutes. The Lady Irish (2-4, 0-3 region) had only three of them, but recovered to nearly match the Lady Pats’ 12-point total in a faster-paced second quarter to trail by four at the half. 

The pattern repeated as both teams re-established their press with some fresh legs out of halftime, and Southwest added a surplus of two in the teams’ 12 combined points to stretch it out a bit more. The visitors made only six of their 18 free throw attempts, but maintained the cushion down the stretch of the fourth. 

Bell led Dublin on both ends with 17 points, and nine steals to anchor the defense. MySaviour Darby led the Lady Pats with 13 points. Janay Parker had nine. 

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Saturday’s performance was much more opportune, but an inability to strike when numerous windows opened plagued the Lady Raiders over the course of a defensive struggle at Aquinas Friday night. 

West Laurens was unable to mount any sustained threat to Augusta’s Lady Irish after they took advantage of several early-game slumps to build a double-digit lead before halftime. 

“We didn’t play our best game,” Rogers said. “We left a lot of points out there on the board and ended up getting beat. The big point of emphasis was we’ve got to be able to respond. The girls came out and did that today.”  

Aquinas put together an 8-0 run to take control late in the first quarter following a 4-4 start, with Jackson picking up a single basket before the end of the quarter, then another after a nearly four-minute West Laurens drought to open the second, over which Aquinas had added 10 more to its number.  

The Lady Raiders finished up the half on a 6-2 run to get within 11 going into the break, but found the big gap too tough to overcome in the second half. They trailed 33-20 after three, and went to the full-court press to spark a last-chance run with just under four minutes to go. 

West cut a nine-point deficit to just six as Jackson and Carswell combined for a reverse 3-point play with 2:53 left, but the Lady Raiders had a golden opportunity go for naught almost immediately after picking the ball up off an Aquinas shoe, and missing a wide-open layup that would have cut it to just a four-point lead. 

The Irish, instead, took the rebound down the court and hit a key shot to put the lead back at eight. They did the same off a subsequent turnover to make the score 40-30, and shut the door on a West Laurens comeback. 

The Raider boys, led by the 17 points, eight rebounds and three blocked shots of Mark Fordham, took Aquinas apart from the opening tip, racing out to leads of 10-3 after three minutes, 25-8 by the quarter and 40-17 at the half before blowing the lid off of a second-straight third quarter, 34-8. 

While its offensive sets were not overly productive early in the game, West Laurens gave itself plenty of them with a full-court press that kept Aquinas flustered in the grind of offensive motions required to advance the ball over midcourt from possession to possession. 

The Raiders, who seemed comfortable scoring from anywhere on the court except from 3 (where the team was only 1-of-18), also relied on Nas Jones (with 16 points), R.J. Whipple (for 15) and Coverson (with 13) for double-digit point totals. They missed just one of their 19 free throws.

– Horace Austin contributed to this report.