By Brannon King for the FCT

The Russellville Golden Tigers took the Class 5A, Area 16 tournament championship for the second year in a row, and this time it happened in an unusual fashion.

Playing in front of a big home crowd Friday night, the Golden Tigers (18-7) defeated East Limestone 83-81 after the Indians had tied the score late on a banked-in three-pointer with 4.6 seconds remaining in the game. After a timeout, RHS was set to throw the ball in and used a seldom-seen play. Instead of immediately passing to a teammate inbounds, Bailey Motes passed the ball sideways to Devin Buckhalter, who was also out of bounds. The East Limestone defender lost track of where he was on the court and aggressively made a play on the ball, which resulted in a technical foul on the Indians. Lucas McNutt then went to the line and calmly made the two free-throws to seal the win for Russellville.

“It was a championship game,” Russellville Head Coach Patrick Odom said with a smile when asked where to start in describing the exciting victory. “First of all, give East Limestone a tremendous amount of credit for how they played and competed to the very end. They had guys making shots that you can’t defend down the stretch on some of those three-pointers.”

East Limestone hit a total of 15 three-pointers in the game, and Hunter Pankey connected on six of them, including the one that tied the score late in the game. The Indians’ last four made shots in the contest all came from beyond the three-point line.

“I love my guys,” Odom said. “We kept our composure and kept playing. We did a tremendous job at the free-throw line. It was also great execution of a late-game play with a lot of options, and of course you never anticipate exactly what happened.

“These guys are just competitors, and I love them, and they’re just fun to coach. I can’t say enough about how proud I am of them.”

Motes led Russellville in scoring with 27 points in the game. Devin Buckhalter with 24 and Lucas McNutt with ten also scored in double figures for RHS. They were followed by Taylor Vincent (8), Austin Stidham (8), Judd Ward (4) and Caden Parker (2).

With the win, Russellville earned the right to host the sub-regional game against the Lee-Huntsville Generals. RHS had already punched their ticket to the sub-regional round with a win over the Lawrence County Red Devils in the first round of the Class 5A, Area 16 tournament at RHS.

Russellville defeated the Red Devils Feb. 7, 81-65. Lawrence County jumped out to a 23-13 first quarter lead and led by two points at the half, but the Golden Tigers finished strong by outscoring LCHS by 16 points in the fourth quarter to grab the win, with the help of McNutt’s outside shooting. McNutt hit three three-pointers in the fourth quarter for RHS, as Motes saw close defense throughout the game from the Red Devils, and that led to open teammates.

“I knew we were going to be in for a fight,” Odom said after the game. “They played us a lot of triangle-in-one tonight. They tried to do a good job of taking Bailey Motes away, and Lucas McNutt is probably our best pure shooter. He had open looks because of what they were doing, and he did his job tonight by stepping up and knocking those shots down.”

Buckhalter had a big game for Russellville and led all scorers with 21 points. McNutt finished with 20, and Stidham added 15 points. Motes (9), Vincent (9), Ward (5) and Houston Kitterman (2) all added points for RHS.