The Eagles boys basketball team won two games over the holiday break, the second on Saturday a 71-65 win over Versailles in the first round of the Tri-County Conference Tournament at Osage.

The Eagles, now 5-3, played unbeaten and top tournament seed Hallsville on Tuesday night, see bocojo.com for results.

The Eagles were out-shot early by Versaille, who took a 19-15 lead at the end of the first quarter.

“They came out and hit their first four shots and hit some 3s,” said Eagles coach Andy Jahnsen, “but we switched to a man-to-man defense and took away their open shots.”

The change helped the Eagles go on a 19-7 second quarter run behind the scoring of Rece Gilmore, who hit four-of-10 3-point shots in the contest. Gilmore led SoBoCo with 28 points.

The Eagles went to the locker room with a 34-26 lead and held that lead in the second half with a patient half-court defense and scoring from Gilmore and Sam Stichnote, who pitched in 14 points on six-of-nine shooting.

“We had an 8-point lead and I felt that was safe,” Jahnsen said, “so we did not use our press. I think they tried to go on a run, but we stayed with them and controlled the game.”

~ Get more in today’s Journal ~

By Bruce Wallace