Soon enough, Polk County boys basketball coach Josh McEntire will trade his whistle for cleats in his role as assistant coach for the Wolverine baseball program.
But despite Wednesday’s spring-like weather, McEntire was more than happy to spend the afternoon inside.
Fresh off Tuesday’s upset of Owen in the opening round of the Western Highlands Conference basketball tournament, Polk County (7-15) held a short practice in preparation for Thursday’s WHC semifinal game against Mountain Heritage. That semifinal is scheduled to start at 8:30 p.m. at Hendersonville High School.
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Mountain Heritage (10-11) enters as the tournament’s third seed and defeated Hendersonville in Tuesday’s first round.
“We got up a lot of shots, reviewed our inbound plays and went over our game plan versus Heritage,” McEntire said of Wednesday’s practice. “The mood of the team was upbeat but focused. The guys were glad to be practicing and playing another day but realize we still have work to do.”
Polk County dropped two close decisions to the Cougars in the regular season, a 66-59 loss at home and an 80-79 loss in Burnsville. Mountain Heritage junior Avery Austin scored 40 points in that latter win and leads the Cougars at 21.4 points per game.
“I am not sure we can stop Avery Austin altogether, but hopefully we can slow him down,” McEntire said. “Last time we gave him way too many open looks or we fouled him and gave him easy points at the free throw line. Our goal is to keep him in front of us and making him shoot guarded jump shots.
“As a team we need to limit their open looks and hold them to one shot. We also need to create some turnovers and get some easy baskets in transition and if we can’t get an easy basket in transition, then we need to be patient versus Heritage’s zone.”
Polk County’s girls (13-9) will face a much larger task, meeting top seed Mountain Heritage in a 4 p.m. semifinal game.
The Cougars put together an unbeaten run through the Western Highlands Conference, going 12-0 in league play and 18-2 overall this season. Mountain Heritage thumped Polk 64-29 before Christmas, but the Wolverines rebounded in the rematch at Mountain Heritage, tying the score at one point in the fourth quarter before the Cougars pulled out a 48-37 win.
“Mountain Heritage is the best team in the league for a reason,” said Polk County head coach Craig Culbreth. “They’ve got really good players. We’ve got to shoot well and play good defense.”
Junior Destiny Elkins averages 18.8 points and 11.4 rebounds per game to lead Mountain Heritage, which also gets 13 points per game from senior Nyssa Freeman.
“We’ve got to keep away from that one bad quarter,” Culbreth said. “We seem to have that every game.
“Mountain Heritage can run, press, they can do it all. We’ll have to play a great game. But we’ve been playing pretty good lately.”
