SPORTS REPORT
It was sort of a rough night for the Lowco with Battery Creek and Beaufort High both dropping the girls and boys games in their region openers, as North Charleston swept the Dolphins and Philip Simmons took down the Eagles, setting up a key head-to-head matchup between the crosstown rivals on Tuesday night in The Nest.
Hilton Head Prep also dropped both ends against visiting Savannah Country Day in a Lowco homecoming for Hornets coaches Kenny Conroy and Mac Tamminen.
Bridges Prep’s boys evened their region record with a solid 59-44 win over Bamberg-Ehrhardt, but the only other wins for the area on Friday came at the expense of Lowco rivals. The Cross girls and Patrick Henry boys won big in a split on The Farm, and the Colleton Prep girls and Thomas Heyward boys picked up wins in a region showdown.
And speaking of showdowns, HHCA had a pair of them on Saturday with the girls hosting powerhouse Gray Collegiate and the boys popping around the corner to The Den to battle with the Bluffton Bobcats. Gray was able to grind out a 42-34 win over the Eagles despite 17 points from Tamya Hutchinson, and the Bobcats rallied late to set up a fantastic finish in the nightcap.
HHCA outscored Bluffton 16-0 in the first quarter, but the Bobcats chipped away and pulled back into the game to set up a game-winning buzzer beater from Khalyl Chaplin. Qayden Turner got one more look for the Eagles but it was just off the mark, allowing the Bobcats to escape with a 42-40 win in an absolute battle.
Hampton County swept visiting Whale Branch on Saturday night, including a 54-45 win in a matchup of two of the Lowco’s top boys teams, and Patrick Henry finished off a road sweep at Andrew Jackson Academy when the boys pulled out a 76-72 overtime win for their second victory in two days.
We have a busy slate of region games and Lowco-on-Lowco matchups, and we’ll preview the biggest games and update the region outlooks around the Lowco on Monday night’s LowcoSports Lowdown and round up all the scores and stats Tuesday night on the Lowco Hoops Report.
Staying on the subject of hoops, the USCB Sand Sharks hit the road for the first time in Peach Belt Conference play on Saturday and got a first-hand lesson in how difficult it is to win away from home in one of the top leagues in NCAA Division II. Clayton State swept the Sand Sharks, winning the women’s game 62-48 and taking the nightcap 98-86 to snap the USCB mens’ five-game win streak. We broke down the Sand Sharks’ first two Peach Belt contests and looked ahead to Wednesday’s home game against Lander on a new episode of Sand Shark Rewind on Sunday.
And it was a busy weekend on the mats with wrestlers from the Lowco competing all over the state. Battery Creek hosted the annual Coach Trap Duals, named to honor the late Camillo Trapuzzano, a longtime coach at Battery Creek and Thomas Heyward Academy. The host Dolphins knocked off Waccamaw in a thriller decided by tiebreaker criteria, while Bluffton topped Creek but lost to the Warriors, creating a three-way tie for the top spot in the standings, which went in the Bobcats’ favor by virtue of their scoring the most team points head-to-head among the tied teams.
Bridges Prep and John Paul the 2nd both had strong showings at the Raptor Rumble Duals at Academic Magnet, as the host Raptors were the only team to take down either Lowco squad. The Golden Warriors dropped their first match to Academic Magnet but won four straight to claim third place, including a 42-36 victory over Stall that was secured by unlikely pins from Brian Orta and Gavin Byrne. The Bucs were undefeated until falling 54-30 to the Raptors in the championship match after losing two wrestlers to injury earlier in the day.
At the head of the class when it comes to Lowco wrestling are the May River Sharks, who fell one point shy of claiming the title at the 30-team Dreher Blue Devil Invitational, where Houston Rudisill and Will Mauro finished second, Dillon Seman and Josh Echeverria placed third, and Marcus Foulk, Gavin Siatkowski, and Beau Gwynn were fourth in their weight classes.
We dug deeper into the results and took a look at the junior varsity and middle school state qualifier meets on a new episode of the Lowco Grind presented by Reverence Wrestling Club on the Lowco Media Network.
Justin Jarrett, Lowco Sports
Last Night in the LowCo
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January 2024
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