Lady Packers, Packers to play region tournament-openers at home
Published 3:02 pm Saturday, February 12, 2022
MOULTRIE — The senior members of the Colquitt County girls and boys basketball teams have one more opportunity to play on the William Bryant Court in front of the home fans.
The Lady Packers and Packers will play host to Camden County in the play-in games of the Region 1-7A tournament on Tuesday.
The winners of those two games will advance to tournament semifinals on Thursday.
The finals will be played on Friday. Both the semifinals and finals will be played at Tift County.
If the Lady Packers, the No. 3 seed, can defeat Camden County, the No. 4 seed, for a third straight time on Tuesday, they will advance to meet second-seeded Lowndes at 6 p.m. Thursday.
The top-seeded Tift County girls have a bye until the tournament championship game and are guaranteed a first-round state tournament home game.
The Lady Packers will take a 13-9 overall record and a 3-3 region record into Tueday’s game against the Lady Wildcats, who did not win a region game.
The Colquitt girls defeated Camden 54-36 in Kingsland on Jan. 7 and got the region sweep with a 41-35 win in Moultrie on Jan. 28.
Although they dropped their regular-season finale 46-41 to Lowndes last Thursday, the Lady Packers have won five of their last six.
They also are 7-4 on the William Bryant Court this season.
Junior Carliss Johnson is the team’s leading scorer, averaging 14.5 points a game.
Freshman Amareyia Knighton is scoring 11.8 points a game.
Heaven Robinson, one of the three Lady Packers who will play their final game at home on Tuesday, leads the team in rebounding with 6.5 a game.
The other Lady Packer seniors are D’Zeriyah Polite and Gracie Belle Paulk.
Johnson scored 36 points in the two games against Camden and reached 1,000 career points in the win over the Lady Wildcats in Moultrie.
Like the Colquitt County girls, the Packers are the No. 3 seed.
One of their three region losses was at the hands of the Camden County boys by a 55-39 score on Jan. 18, in Kingsland.
The Packers avenged that loss at home, winning 55-43 in the rematch.
The Colquitt County boys overall record is 7-16.
Five Packers will appear on the William Bryant Court for the final time on Tuesday.
They are Avari Blackwell, Montana Edwards, Nathan Harden, Dy Williams and Cameron Johnson.
If the Packers can get by the Wildcats, they will advance to play No. 2 seed Tift County at 7:30 p.m Thursday on the Blue Devils home court.
Colquitt and Tift County split their meetings this season with the Packers winning 46-44 at home and losing 49-30 in Tifton.
Region boys champion Lowndes has a bye to the championship game.
The Vikings are 19-2 overall and won all six of their region games.