Forsyth Central High School

Basketball: Dawgs clip Cass

Custer scores 27 in team's 12th win

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Every Forsyth Central boys basketball practice ends the same way.

Five minutes are entered on the scoreboard, and for that duration, the Bulldogs scrimmage five-on-five with as much intensity and physicality as they can muster.

“We’ll have a ‘five-minute war’ type thing, we call it,” forward Colby Barnes said. “It’s just going as hard as we can for the last couple minutes of practice, just spilling it out there, and I think that translates over to the games.”

Central’s seen its fair share of late tight battles in games recently, too, and Saturday evening’s 67-61 victory over Cass at the D.B. Carroll Complex was no exception. The Bulldogs (12-8, 5-5 Region 7-AAAA) needed four successful free throws from T.J. Custer and Jeremiah Jones and a lockdown defensive play by Barnes inside the last 30 seconds to secure the win.

Central’s last three region wins have each come by seven points or less and been decided during the final minutes. They remained in the top half of the 7-AAAA standings with five contests left on the schedule, starting with a road trip to Chattahoochee Tuesday.

“You’ve got to put yourself there [in close situations] several times and then have some success with it,” said coach Steve Barnes (Colby’s father). “Every time that you have a close game or overtime and pull it out, or even when we don’t, if you learn something from it—this team, well, we’ve gotten so much better, I think.”

Custer was his usual clutch self, scoring 13 of his game-high 27 points in the fourth quarter and going 6-for-8 from the free-throw line in  the frame. During the final half-minute, he missed the back end of a one-and-one but regained possession after the rebound and was fouled immediately.

This time, he sunk both freebies, giving the Bulldogs a 64-59 lead with 24.4 seconds left. Cass’ Tony Mitchell converted a running, one-handed shot in the lane to cut the lead back to three, but Jones’ 1-for-2 foul stripe appearance with 12.2 ticks remaining made it 64-61.

Colby Barnes then tapped the ball away from Mitchell in the left corner, and it deflected off the Colonels guard as he fell out of bounds. Custer made two more free throws with 2.3 seconds remaining to top off his high-scoring night.

“He is certainly a go-to man, and other teams know that,” Steve Barnes said of Custer. “You know what? He doesn’t have magic mirrors or anything. It’s because of the time that he’s put in in the gym. If you come in any morning, just about, you’re going to find T.J. Custer shooting baskets.”

In a game where the lead changed hands frequently and rarely stood at more than a possession, the Bulldogs made exactly half their shots (26 of 52). Center Andrew Fishler scored 16 points, and Colby Barnes chipped in 10.

Mitchell and Kadeem Sutton each scored 15, and Jozelle Payne and Zeke Reed finished with 13 apiece for an aggressive, up-tempo Cass team (11-8, 4-5).

“Most nights, we go into games knowing that we’re not going to be the most athletic team,” Colby Barnes said. “We know that you don’t have to be faster than the fish or stronger than the fish, you have to be smarter than the fish. That’s what we kind of harp on.”

A focal point of Central’s defensive game plan due to his outside shooting ability, Reed hit three first-half 3s but didn’t score in the second half. The Bulldogs switched to a zone in the fourth in hopes of guarding the perimeter, and Reed spent most of the third quarter and first half of the fourth on the bench, as Cass made a point of getting to the rim.

Central led 15-12 after a quarter and 28-22 at the break. Passing up a few usual 3-point attempts, Custer used head fakes to drive to the rim and score eight points in the first quarter. Fishler tipped in Chap Lindstrom’s 3-point miss at the second-period buzzer.

Payne went off for all his points in the third, hitting a big 3 and converting an and-one layup on consecutive possessions. The latter play tied the game at 41, and another three-point play by Sutton and two Mitchell free throws gave Cass a 47-44 lead heading into the final frame.

Custer scored the Dawgs’ first seven points of the fourth on two slicing lay-ins and a 3 from the right wing, the third of which gave Central the lead for good, 51-49 with 5:28 left. Cass stayed within a possession until Fishler flushed home Jones’ missed layup with 2:23 to go.

The rim was still shaking as flustered Cass coach Greg Scott called timeout.

Mitchell drilled 3s from the top of the key and right wing during the last minute-and-a-half, bringing the Colonels within a shot of tying or leading both times.

But for the second Saturday in a row, the Dawgs did just enough to preserve victory in the final seconds.

“Tonight, we just kept responding,” said Steve Barnes, whose squad beat Rome last Saturday in double overtime. “We found a way.”