By John Morgan, Sports Reporter

Collinsville 39-Randolph County 37

Collinsville “How do you win a game where you only score 9 points in the second half?”  A Collinsville coach answered, “You don’t.  But we did.”

Collinsville defeated Randolph County 39-37 in Wedowee Tuesday night.  The win in the sub-regional game moves Collinsville onto the Regional Tournament in Jacksonville where they will play Friday afternoon at 4:30.

Randolph got off to a quick start and was up by almost 10 in the first quarter.  Collinsville seemed tentative before getting their feet under them by playing tight defense and cutting the lead to one at the end of the first quarter 14-13.

From that point on, the Panthers pushed their lead out to 8 at halftime and 10 going into the fourth leading 37-27.  They only scored two points in the fourth, and Randolph County slowly cut the lead to 39-37 with 38 seconds left in the game.  Randolph crashed the boards again and again as both teams played very physically.

In the last seconds, Randolph had three misses inside the lane after offensive rebounds.  When the ball went out of bounds, they had one last chance with exactly one second left.  Reco Hannah launced a ten footer that bounced off the rim as the horn sounded and the Panthers celebrated.  Hannah had 11 points and 9 rebounds and JR Roundtree had 9 and 8.

Randolph County  put Collinsville out of the playoffs in basketball last year and in football this year.  Collinsville was led by Keaton Kilgro  with 13 points and 7 rebounds as he also played tight post defense all night.  Austin Posey had 15 and 7, Kaleb Jones with 5 and 5 and Dominick Brockitt with 4 and 5.

The Panthers shot 82% on free throws (9/11) while Randolph made only 7/15.  They also made 7 3’s pointers to Randolph’s one.