After a trip to Southern Academy over the weekend, the Morgan Academy boys basketball team came back with some hardware.

The Senators were crowned champions of the Southern Academy Christmas Tournament after defeating Pickens Academy 47-30 on Saturday in the championship game.

Connor Henderson had 17 points and 3 rebounds for the Senators, while Dalton Lee had 13 points and 8 rebounds, and Ford Manderson had 5 points for Morgan.

Lee was named the tournament most valuable player after his performance, which included a 20 point, 10 rebound performance in Friday’s 73-47 over Southern.

Henderson was named to the all-tournament team.

As the Senators improved to 6-1 on the season after the tournament, Morgan head boys basketball coach Bob Taylor said his team is playing well and the tournament win builds confidence.

“It really helps us as far as our confidence level. We feel like they’re playing pretty decent basketball right now,” Taylor said. “The biggest thing was we played a fun-and-gun type game on Friday where we took 76 shots and scored 73 points and then the next night we scored 47 points. It’s a turnaround with a little more walk it up the court in the way they played. It forces you to play different styles on different nights and have to prepare for that on the run.”

The Senators are preparing for a week that will include games against Wilcox at home on Tuesday starting a 4 p.m., a Thursday game at Lowndes Academy and a tournament game at Tuscaloosa against Patrician.

Taylor said the tournaments help teams learn how to adapt to different playing styles.

“I look just to see how we’re going to respond playing against different styles of basketball against different people,” Taylor said. “We don’t play Southern during the year, we don’t play Pickens during the year and we’ll face Patrician at Tuscaloosa. So those three teams that we normally don’t play during the year gives us an opportunity to see what those teams have and see what we have.”