Eye on the title

Coming into their game Tuesday night against Kinder, the Mamou High Demons had one goal in mind; win and force a playoff game against Welsh for the district championship.
The Demons did just that, pulling away from the Yellow Jackets in the fourth quarter with a 68-57 win.
Now, Mamou will face off against Welsh for the third time this season with the district title on the line.
Game day and time is set for Friday at 6 p.m. in Elton.
“It wasn’t the prettiest of wins,” stated Mamou head coach John Jack. “But, it allows us to play one more game. The first time we played them this season, we won by 13 points, and the second time we played they beat us on a last second shot. One thing we will need to improve upon in this match-up is our free throw shooting. The first time we played it was horrible.”
Hopefully the game against Kinder is not an indication of how Mamou will do at the charity stripe in their next game; the Demons shot below 30 percent from the line against the Yellow Jackets.
Mamou looked as if they were going to put the game away early. The Demons jumped out to a 15-5 lead at the 1:39 mark of the first quarter and held on for a 18-9 as the quarter came to a close.
However, a number of missed shot opportunities under the basket and a plethora of turnovers helped Kinder to crawl back into the game.
On two point basket by Kinder’s Payton Johnson, the Yellow Jackets cut the lead down to five points with 2:35 left to go in the half.
Kinder carried that momentum for the remaining time in the second quarter, and cut the lead down to 30-26 as the first half buzzer sounded.
We really played sloppy in the first half,” said Jack. “We made a number of errants passes and missed too many easy baskets. We were lucky to still have the lead going into the locker room.”
Kinder opened the second half by hitting two quick baskets to cut the lead to one point, 31-30.
The Demons responded by scoring the next six points to extend the lead back to seven.
The third quarter ended with Mamou pressing the ball up the floor on offense off of rebounds and widening the margin by 12 points, 49-37, as the third quarter closed.
Kinder did not help themselves in the second half, shooting under 35 percent from the floor in the final two quarters.
Because of the Yellow Jacket shooting woes, Mamou was able to blow open the lead to 20 points, 68-48, with only 2:08 left in the game.
Mamou closed out the game with mostly bench players on the floor.
Leading the way for the Demons was Russell Edwards who netted 17 points. Lil Paul Williams added 14 points, while Mack Thomas chipped in 12 points for Mamou.