FLEMING ISLAND – Fleming Island High basketball revved up their fourth quarter engines, led by senior center Aaron Brown’s game high 26 points, to take away the speed of Tate High’s attack in the Golden Eagles’s 79-67 region quarterfinal win over Tate High Thursday night at Fleming Island High School.
“We wanted to keep the tempo high and run them out of the gym tonight,” said Brown. “Our target was their number three (guard Bettis Love, 21.4 points per game) to keep pressure on him. He got us in the first half, but we slowed him down in the second half.”
Brown, who spurned a third quarter momentum shift with an alley-oop slam dunk from guard Sebastian Astor, that was followed by a soft three pointer. The crowd-pleasing double play turned a 41-38 Tate lead to a 44-40 Fleming Island shift that pushed the Golden Eagles attack to outscore Tate 15-6 in a three minute span to end the third quarter.
“Seb and I work that in practice and we had it set up nice in that third quarter,” said Brown. “And then, to add to the gym, I hit that three and the place went nuts.”
Astor, who dished seven assists, finished with 17 points with Ahman Greenidge adding 13 and Elias Martin punching in 10 under the backboard on top of 11 rebounds. Greenidge had 10 rebounds.
Third-seeded for region 1-6A Fleming Island (20-8) now travels to second-seed Daytona Beach Mainland (18-10) for their region 1-6A semifinal on Tues., Feb. 25. Columbia High (26-2) is top seed for region 1-6A and will face fifth seed Tallahassee Lincoln (23-5) in their semifinal.
Mainland did beat Fleming Island 71-65 on January 10 in regular season play. Mainland averages nearly 76 points per game in the last five games; all wins with a 94 point outing against Spruce Creek on February 5.
“We needed Aaron’s effort; running the floor and a couple of big moments out there,” said Chandler. “The excitement of the gym kept us in the game and we improved a lot of those little things in big games that we still need to work on. The other teams only get tougher and tougher as we go.”
With the 12 point gap entering the fourth quarter, Fleming Island coach Traavis Chandler was wary of a Tate regroup and kept his troops on full throttle to grow the lead to 66-52 with four minutes to play.
“That guard (Love) put a lot of pressure on us in the first half and we were just trying to stay up with him,” said Chandler. “We figured we could wear him down, but he broke our press and we had to go zone.”
From there, Tate made some quick scores against the looser Fleming Island defense to close the game to 69-60, but Chandler quickly reinserted his main weapons to finish with a 10-7 surge to the final 79-67 score.
Tate was already at 11 team fouls in the final two minutes making a comeback futile despite a nifty steal to layup plus free throw by Tate guard Keshaun Black that closed the gap to 73-65 with 1:12 to go.
In region 1-5A, Orange Park High (sixth seed, 15-11) punched in with a 14-7 fourth quarter to tie Choctowhatchee (third-seed), but eventually fell 48-42 in overtime to end their season in the region quarterfinals.
Choctawhatchee stormed to a 12-7 first quarter lead, but could not shake the pesky Raiders who answered with a three pointer from D’Marre Craddock to pull to 35-34 late in the fourth quarter before tying the game at 37-37.