By By BRUCE HIXON – Sports Editor
Both the Brewton Middle School Tigers and Lady Tigers completed season sweeps of visiting W.S. Neal Monday, but in vastly different fashion.
The Tigers overcame a 15-point deficit and survived a missed shot attempt at the buzzer to nip the Blue Eagles 35-34. Meanwhile the Lady Tigers rolled to a 29-12 win to stay unbeaten on the season.
W.S. Neal (6-6) stormed out to a 15-3 lead after one quarter in the boys game and widened it to 18-3 on Jeremy Alexander's field goal and Jeremy Nicholson's free throw in the first 30 seconds of the second quarter.
Brewton (4-2) was able to work its way back, as it closed out the first half on a 12-0 run and cut W.S. Neal's lead to just 18-15.
The Tigers wiped out the remainder of the lead in the third quarter when Cortez Banks' fastbreak layup tied the game at 23-23. The game was still deadlocked at 31-31 until buckets by Keyanta Lewis and Banks with just over two minutes left put Brewton 35-31. Alexander brought the Blue Eagles to within a point when he buried a three-pointer with just over a minute left.
W.S. Neal got a chance to pull the game out when Chris Bell missed the front end of a one-and-one with :05.8 left. The Blue Eagles quickly got the ball down the floor, but missed a baseline shot at the buzzer.
Nicholson led W.S. Neal with 11 points, while Alexander had nine. Lewis led Brewton with 12 points, while Banks added nine.
Both Brewton and W.S. Neal got off to a bit of slow start in the girls game.
The Lady Tigers (6-0) led 4-3 after a quarter and still led by only a 10-7 margin late in the second quarter when they hit their stride with a 14-0 run over the next five minutes. In fact, W.S. Neal (8-4) was limited to just two field goals and five points over the last 14 minutes.
Keydra Shedrone knocked in 12 points to lead the Lady Tigers, while Nakiya Smith and Adrian Gibbs each had five. Shanique Harris had five points to top W.S. Neal's scoring.
While the curtain came down on W.S. Neal's season, Brewton will resume its campaign January 5 when it hosts Ernest Ward.
Girls
W.S.Neal 3 4 3 2 – 12
Brewton 4 11 9 5 – 29
W.S. NEAL- Harris 5, Day 4, Kyles 3
BREWTON- Shedrone 15, Smith 5, Gibbs 5, McCorvey 4
W.S. Neal 15 3 9 7 – 34
Brewton 3 12 12 8 – 35
W.S. NEAL- Nicholson 11, Alexander 9, Bailey 6, Smith 6, Elliott 2
BREWTON- Lewis 12, Banks 9, Riley 8, L. Dozier 3, Powell 2, Bell 1