This time of year, every coach wants to be playing their best ball of the season as the playoffs begin, and that’s exactly what the Columbia Wildcats are doing.
When the Region 7-4A Tournament began last week at Purvis, Columbia (8-15) was on the outside looking in as the No. 5 seed with only four teams making the playoffs. But not only did the Wildcats manage to crash the party and clinch a playoff berth with a first-round victory, they jumped up to the No. 3 seed with a convincing win in the consolation game.
As the third seed, the Wildcats drew a favorable matchup in the first round of the Class 4A playoffs that began Tuesday. Columbia squared off against Bay (8-20), who is one of the weaker No. 2 seeds in the state, but results were unavailable at press time.
Prior to the game, Columbia head coach Jordan Dupuy said Bay is athletic and has good guard play, but he believes the Wildcats can counter a lot of what the Tigers do.
“As long as we take care of the ball and handle the atmosphere, we’ll give ourselves a shot,” he said. “What we struggle with — scoring consistently in the half court — they struggle with. There’s a lot of similarities. I think we’re going to be harder to prepare for because we run a lot more stuff offensively and defensively.”
He added the key to the game would be stopping Bay’s lefty point guard.
In the first round of the district tournament Feb. 8, the Wildcats trailed by 13 points at halftime but fought back to beat Poplarville 59-52 in double overtime. Dupuy said they should have actually won in regulation or the first overtime but missed way too many free throws.
In the district semifinals, Columbia struggled to score in the half court with Forrest County AHS’ athleticism making things difficult inside in a 64-32 loss.
Columbia managed to snag the No. 3 seed from Region 7-4A in the consolation game by beating Sumrall 55-38 on Friday. Dupuy said the first half was Columbia’s best half in terms of execution in the half court all year.
“I was pretty pleased with those two victories. We showed a lot of different things,” he said. “Hopefully we can combine those two and put it all together (Tuesday) night.”
Over the past few weeks, Columbia has been competing at a much higher level than it did during its non-district schedule and the first half of the district slate. Dupuy said freshman Avyon Lewis has played exceptionally well and is shooting a high percentage and scoring around the rim. But the biggest difference has been the bench play for the Wildcats.
When Dupuy was hired two years ago, he talked about wanting to use a platoon system to overwhelm teams with defensive pressure and pace. However, because of various injuries and several of his top players opting out because they earned football scholarship, he had to scrap that plan and rely on a reduced rotation. Now, his bench is playing at a high level to complement the starting lineup.
“The last couple of weeks, our bench has been giving us lifts and scoring and defending,” he said. “There hasn’t been a huge drop-off when we sub, and that’s helping us out tremendously. Also, we’ve done a lot better defending in the half court. I haven’t had to use a lot of our traps and things like that. We’ve been sitting in our half-court man and just defending.”
