Stories from Friday, January 27, 2017

Riding its first three-game winning streak in over two seasons the Cornersville Bulldogs faced a daunting task against one-loss Richland. To make matters worse the Bulldogs traveled to Lynnville without its head coach, Matt Hagan, who is sitting out two games after being ejected during the Santa Fe contest. But with assistant coach Louis Scheuchenzuber on the bench the Bulldogs handled the Raiders' press with ease during the first two quarters before Richland's experience and depth allowed the Giles County squad to pull away for the 67-39 win.

Following a tough 35-point loss to Richland the previous night, the Cornersville Bulldogs returned home to southern Marshall County for another monumental task against Columbia Academy (15-2, 9-1), who is tied with Richland for first place in the district with one loss. And despite the wide variance in records for the two Bulldog clubs, Cornersville (5-11, 5-5) had Columbia Academy on the ropes, down just 33-30 with 5:21 remaining in the third quarter before CA pulled away for the 67-39 win.

The Cornersville Lady Bulldogs finished off a brutal three-game week with a visit from Columbia Academy on Homecoming night with the a chance to regain a foothold on a top position in the District 11A standings. Unfortunately for the Lady Bulldogs, a third straight fourth quarter meltdown left a team that started the week tied for first place in the district standings, struggling to maintain a top-four spot with the loss to Columbia Academy, 55-45.

Page Middle School beat the FMS Rockets 66-41 in a recent meeting and in the first round of the 55th Annual World Tournament at Forrest, the same two teams met again. The heavily favored 2A Panthers ran into a determined Forrest squad that put together its best all-around performance of the season. This time Forrest would not let the Panthers get comfortable in their offense and bang the Rockets in the low post like in the first meeting.

After Page Middle School recently beat FMS 46-31, the Lady Panthers came into the 55th Annual World Tournament at Chapel Hill as the favorites to win the four-team event. The Lady Rockets had other ideas and they backed it up with a game plan for success that turned into an exciting 34-32 win in Thursday night's opening round game that was well played the entire 24 minutes.

After a big win at Cascade on Thursday, the Marshall County Tigerettes made it two wins in a row, beating Nolensville 55-42 Friday night at Dottie Kelso Memorial Gymnasium in Lewisburg to move above the .500 mark for the first time since 2010. These were important wins for us," sophomore Demariae Ingram said. "At the end of the year, some people are giving up because the season is almost over, but our coach (David Steely) always tells us to keep going and come out on top."

The 55th Annual World Tournament at Chapel Hill was pared down to just four teams this year because of the vote by the Duck River Valley Conference members at the beginning of the school session to rotate the DRVC Tournament site. It didn't matter to the Forrest Lady Rockets, who pulled off a big upset over 2A Page in round one before taking down Cannon County 36-25 in the title game Saturday for back-to-back tournament titles.

ollowing a tough overtime loss can be difficult, especially the very next day, but the Marshall County Tigers overcame the setback at Wartrace on Thursday night with a big 75-37 coast-to-coast blowout win over Nolensville at Dottie Kelso Memorial Gymnasium on Friday. KJ Johnson continued his stellar sophomore season for the Tigers with a 27-point performance versus the Knights, including five out of the nine 3-pointers for Marshall County in the contest.

After fighting tournament favorite Page in a close loss in Thursday's opening round, the FMS Rockets came out on fire in Saturday's consolation game of the 55th Annual World Tournament, dismantling Eagleville in a 46-12 coast-to-coast win. "I felt the team improved as the season progressed and I'm proud of our eighth graders work ethic and leadership," FMS coach Robby Reasonover said.

Despite a tough loss on Tuesday to Santa Fe, the Cornersville Lady Bulldogs had a chance to redeem the setback and regain a share of first place in the district with a win at Richland in a makeup game on Thursday night. Cornersville took leads into the second quarter, halftime and found itself down just two heading into the final quarter before suffering a second straight fourth quarter breakdown, losing 48-31 after scoring just five points in the final eight minutes.

One indisputable fact about this Marshall County Tigerettes' team is its ability to play shutdown defense. This season Marshall County has held Creekwood and Pearl-Cohn to its third lowest point totals this season, Culleoka to its second-lowest output this season, Cascade to its lowest total this year, and Mount Pleasant and CPA to their lowest point totals in over two and a half seasons. Defense was once again on full display Tuesday night as the Tigerettes held visiting Giles County to its lowest point total since 2012-13.

The Forrest Rockets are slipping further down in the District 9A standings after dropping their third league game in a row via a 72-51 loss at Eagleville Tuesday night. "Eagleville was very physical, athletic and senior loaded, so it is very difficult to defend them," Forrest coach Randy Toombs said. "They have been the only district team that we struggled with twice." Forrest (4-20, 2-8) is in sixth place in the league standings and is headed for a District 9A Tournament play-in game matchup with Moore County (1-20, 0-10) on February 11 at Huntland.

The Forrest Lady Rockets made the short trek to Eagleville Tuesday and came away with 50-44 lunch pail win. "Anytime we play Eagleville it is going to be a dogfight," Forrest coach Jeremy Jean said. "They were ready to play and made us do some things we haven't done in the past." Class A Miss Basketball hopeful and Belmont signee Caitlyn Yost followed up her 38-point effort at Community on Friday with 25 points at Eagleville, including three 3-pointers and a stellar 8-for-9 effort from the free throw line.

Emotions ran high inside Dottie Kelso on Tuesday night as a standing room only crowd showed up not just for the always entertaining biannual Giles-Marshall showdown but to show support for one of its own favorite sons, senior D'Andre Brown, who suited up just three days after the passing of his father Jason Brown, an avid Tiger fan who rarely missed a contest. On a night where everything went right for the home team in a 67-50 trouncing of the bitter rival from Pulaski, fans were reminded of one of the most important reasons why young men and women play sports, the relationships you build with your teammates and coaches.

Despite being just the 48th most populous county in Tennessee, Marshall County has a reputation for putting a large number of quality athletes on the hardwood, diamond, and gridiron in spite of the small population pool. In fact, current UT-Martin football star Jay Murphy attributes the small town atmosphere for allowing him to concentrate on the important things growing up in Lewisburg that led to recent success on the football field.

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - Middle Tennessee football will face four 2016 bowl teams, including teams from the ACC, SEC and Big Ten to highlight the 2017 schedule. The Blue Raiders' 2017 schedule is being jointly announced today by Conference USA and Director of Athletics Chris Massaro.

YNCHBURG, TN (Jan. 23, 2017) -- After compiling a winning season under first-year head coach Janice Morey last year, Motlow State's softball program is on the rise. Sophomores Ashton Watkins, Caroline Abernethy and Riley O'Neal will be expected to lead the Lady Bucks when the 2017 campaign gets underway this weekend. Motlow will open the season Jan. 27, when it travels to Clearwater, Fla., to begin three days of competition against some of the nation's top JUCO softball programs. The highlight is Saturday morning at 11 a.m., when the Lady Bucks will play Central Florida, which finished last season ranked second in the nation.

By Jay Langston Editor Over the past couple of years, the popularity of predator hunting has skyrocketed. In fact, manufacturers of game calls now say that orders for predator calls has risen to the level of turkey calls, which means that predator hunting as a sport has a lot of recent new fans. Since there are so many new predator hunting converts across the South, some sage advice from some old pros can help you raise your success rates when hunting some of the more popular varmint species...

Normandy TN: The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency has completed a new fishing pier on Normandy Lake. It is the first of its kind on the lake and will offer an excellent bank fishing opportunity. The pier is located in the Barton Springs Recreation area. Construction began in the fall of 2016 and was recently completed with the addition of a variety of structures that will attract fish once the lake reaches summer pool levels...

CROSSVILLE, Tenn. - A new state record yellow perch is being verified by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA). The fish measured 15 and a half inches in length and weighed 2 pounds, 3 ounces. Mr. Trent McCoy caught the fish in Lake Dartmore just north of Crossville on Monday, January 16. The previous record, a 2 pound, 2 ounce -yellow perch was set by Jackie Kersey at Parksville Lake, Polk County in March of 2010...

Troy Basso Tribune contributor The beauty of being a fisherman lies in sniffing out rumors of either big fish or big catches of fish. The latest rumor was of big catches of tilapia in Old Hickory Lake. As with all angling rumors it had to be investigated thoroughly. I mean a new fish that, that even though is invasive, is palatable! So we picked a nice day with only 20 knot winds and away we went...