Cooter fires away from long range in 81-69 W over Bloomfield

COOTER – Through its recent six losses in seven seven-game stretch, the Cooter High School varsity boy’s basketball squad struggled for a couple of reasons.

First, the Wildcats have played some good teams of late.

Secondly, Cooter had trouble scoring the basketball.

That wasn’t the case – eventually – on Monday, as the Wildcats topped Bloomfield 81-69 in the “Thunder Dome” in Cooter.

“We had a kid (sophomore Alex Sikes),” veteran Wildcat coach David Mathis said following the win, “who sparked us. I don’t know how many (3-pointers) he hit in a row there. It’s like anything, if the ball is going in the hole, they play harder.”

Sikes, who has spent as much time playing at the junior varsity level this winter as he has varsity, buried eight 3-pointers, including five in the final period, to score a career-high 26 points.

Bloomfield (9-13) has struggled to score the ball, as well, this season, but raced out to a 21-14 lead early in the second quarter. However, as it has been for the purple-and-gold Wildcats this season, offensive droughts can occur at any point, and it has doomed second-year coach Ben Sindle’s team at times.

That happened in the second quarter, as Cooter overtook Bloomfield and used a 19-9 scoring advantage to take a 33-30 lead at halftime.

“We never could really get stops,” Sindle said. “It’s one of those things where you hang your hat (on defense) all year and then coming into the last week of the regular season, and we can’t get stops.”

During its recent struggles, Cooter never scored more than 58 points but had tallied 52 by the end of the third quarter.

The hosts then finished the game by dropping 29 points on Bloomfield over the final eight minutes.

“Because we are so small,” Mathis said when asked why the pace of play was critical for his team. “We’ve got to play fast. If (Bloomfield) got us in a half-court, they scored kind of easily.”

The visiting Wildcats notched a couple of more baskets (25) than Cooter did, but against the Bloomfield zone, the host Wildcats found open spots along the perimeter and sank a total of 10 3-pointers.

“We just did not rotate quickly,” Sindle said. “We were very slow-footed on our rotations.”

Cooter (14-9) is in the midst of its sixth consecutive winning season and got 23 points from freshman guard Jayden Mathis, as well as 13 points from junior Ryce Lynn and 10 points from senior Lance Lucy.

As usual, Bloomfield was paced by senior super-scorer Caleb Upchurch, who put in 31 points.

Wildcat senior forward Kayden Craft, who has missed virtually the entire season with an injury, has returned to the floor and had 12 points while senior Lawles Graser (nine points) and junior Colton Grigery (eight points) also contributed.

In theory, Bloomfield is scheduled to visit Holcomb (2-20) tonight at 7:30 p.m., but the inclement weather may dictate differently.

Bloomfield is also scheduled to close its regular season on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at Class 1 No. 11-ranked Richland (Essex) (13-11).

Cooter will close its regular season on Thursday at 6 p.m. against Scott County Central (4-17).