Dragons top Woodland for tournament’s third-place finish
♦ Payton Rhoades scores 26 points to lead the Dragons to a 54-46 win against the Wildcats.
When Pepperell’s lead was challenged against Woodland, the Dragons kept finding a way to keep the Wildcats at bay.
Payton Rhoades racked up 26 points and helped keep the Dragons ahead in a 5446 win over Woodland for a third-place finish in the 66th annual Seven Hills Rotary/ Rome News-tribune Christmas Tournament.
“We always find a way to battle back when we get down,” Pepperell head coach Zach Mendence said. “What’s happening now is the mistakes that we make are not compiling anymore. We’re able to recover quicker, which makes us a better basketball team.”
Woodland never could get ahead of the Dragons, but threatened their lead, getting within two points in the second quarter before Rhoades led an 11-0 run to give Pepperell a 28-15 lead. Rhoades scored nine of the points in the run and helped Pepperell take a 28-20 lead into halftime.
“We are an up-and-down team,” Mendence said. “We make a lot of careless mistakes, but the will and the character and the hard work from my guys helps us overcome those mistakes.”
Phoenix Prime added nine points for the Dragons (36), and Kemp Edge finished with eight points.
Woodland (2-8) was led by Conner Mcguire and Dianthony Heathcock with 16 points each.
The Dragons had a short turnaround from Wednesday’s triple-overtime loss to Coosa in the semifinals and impressed Mendence with their ability to come out strong against the Wildcats.
“We just played a threeovertime game, and we got our hearts ripped out,” Mendence said. “Then you have to turn around and play at 5:30 the next day. It’s tough on young kids to play that much, to be tired and come back. The message was to come out with the same energy and the same effort.”
The win was the third for Pepperell in its last four games after struggling to an 0-5 start to the season.
“We had an extremely tough schedule to start the season,” Mendence said. “We sat there with five straight losses at the beginning of the season and not one of them had their heads down. They knew that they were going to get better and start winning. That is very hard for high schoolers to do.”