Southside coach Charlie Cooper wasn’t discouraged by Saturday’s 61-43 loss to Cabot in the finals of the Citizens Bank Classic.

Oh, losing isn’t part of the process.

But Cooper believes the Mavericks are close.

Cabot’s Jalen Brown scored 23 points and the Panthers hit nine 3-pointers en route to snapping the Mavericks’ four-game winning streak.

“This is the first finals of the tournament we’ve been in in three years,” Cooper said. “Hopefully, this is something we can build on. We missed a lot of shots early and we missed way too many free throws.

“But I thought our defensive effort was pretty good.”

In addition to the missed layups and free throws, Southside hurt its cause with one charging violation after another.

“One of the things we talked about were the charges,” Cooper said. “They’re (Cabot) going to help inside, and they’re going to take charges. We’ve got to give the ball up one dribble quicker to avoid the charge, and we didn’t do that. That’s like six to eight points we didn’t get, and when you that up it’s huge. You beat by 18 and it looks like a blowout, but that’s four points a quarter (off charges).”

High School Basketball

Citizens Bank Classic

Championship

Cabot 61, Southside 43

Cabot 8 19 15 19 — 61

Southside 12 5 12 14 — 43

Cabot (5-1): Brown 23, Hudson 10, May 8, Vance 6, Vaught 5, Weir 5, Rogers 3, Shurley 2, Allgood 2.

Southside (4-2): Brewer 15, Hamilton 6, Gatewood 4, Moore 4, de Latorre 3, Skelton 2, Solomon 2, Thomas 2, Marshall 2, Jackson 2, Smith 1.

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More high school basketball

Cabot coach Jerry Bridges was whistled for a technical foul with 4:46 left in the first quarter for disputing a call by an official.

The Panthers (5-1) seemed to feed off the moment, by flipping the script. Down 8-5 after Ollis Brewer hit two free throws, the Panthers ended the half on a 22-9 scoring run, including a defensive suffocating 19-5 second quarter run.

Southside (4-2) trailed 32-19 after Jacob Hudson’s 3-pointer early in the second half.

But the Mavericks began to whittle the lead down, and despite a wide open missed layup, and two missed free throws, Southside closed to within 36-29 with 3:36 left in the third.

“I looked up and we were down seven with the ball,” Cooper said. “We had our opportunities. We’re still young and learning.

“Hopefully, we’ll build on it.”
