The Selma Times-Journal

Outside shooting was Wallace-Selma’s Achilles heel in the first half Tuesday night, and then suddenly it was the reason the team won its first game of the season.

Guard Kent Jones and center Justin Williams each hit 3-pointers that gave the Patriots (1-11) leads late in the second half, and they held on to beat Gadsden State 64-57.

Williams connected on a 3-pointer to put WCCS ahead 53-51 with 6:35 left. It was the first lead for the Patriots since they were up 3-2 nearly a minute and a half into the game. After losing the lead, Jones hit a triple that made the score 58-56. The team gradually pulled away after that.

“I had been missing shots all night, but I had to take that because I knew I could make it,” Williams said. “We had a couple of key rebounds at the end to seal it. I was lucky my teammates played good tonight.”

It was hot outside shooting in the first 30 minutes of the game that allowed the Cardinals (4-8) to take a lead that got as high as 11 points. They hit seven 3s in that span, but went cold when WCCS applied full-court pressure and dropped back into a zone half-court defense.

Nine of the Cardinals’ last 11 shots were from the outside – all misses. They didn’t score a point from the floor in the last 4:33 of the game, and just two of their 29 second-half points came in the paint.

“We went to our pressure, and we did a good job with that,” Patriots coach Jonnie McCalpine said. “We did what we needed to do to stay in the ball game. This feels better than losing, I’ll tell you that.”

Rishard Tapscott and Antoine Hall both scored 14 points to lead Gadsden.

Mike Acoff led four WCCS scorers in double figures with 17. Jones had 16, Chris Walker had 11 and Alfred Smith had 10.