Paulding County Advances in Region Tournament

When a basketball team jumps out on a 20-1 run in the first quarter like North Paulding did to Paulding County in the first round of the Region 5-AAAA Tournament on Thursday, most people expect a rout. That didn’t happen, and both coaches said they knew that it wouldn’t.

Paulding County head coach Anthony Cayetano had very simple advice during the break between the first a second quarter.

“Wake up!”

During North Paulding’s meeting after the quarter, head coach Chris Wolski warned his team to prepare for a Paulding County run. Boy was he right.

The Patriots outscored North Paulding 31-14 in the second quarter to cut that 19-point deficit down to a respectable two points. They managed the huge turnaround with a balanced scoring attack and some great pressure defense.

Seven different Patriots scored in the second quarter, led by Michael Rush with seven points followed by Johnathan Lewis with six. Rush and Tony Milton nailed 3-pointers in the first minute of the quarter to start a run that North Paulding couldn’t slow down.

Paulding County also took advantage of foul trouble by the Wolfpack’s leading scorer Shaq Carlyle by increasing the full-court defensive pressure. Without Carlyle in to handle the ball, North Paulding’s offense became somewhat sloppy.

“He's out primary ball handler, especially against pressure like they were trying to put on us,” said Wolski. “Morris does a great job of getting the ball down the floor, but Shaq is a different little beast.”

At 34-32, when the second half began, it was anyone’s game. Paulding County guard Mario Franjga took matters into his own hands. Franjga came out shooting and he didn’t stop, scoring 15 points in the third quarter and following instructions from his coaching staff.

“The last few games he's been in an extremely bad slump,” said Cayetano who said that the coaches have been hammering Franjga to shoot more and soon enough the slump would break. “The basket just opened up for him and he let go.”

Pauding County lead by six after three quarters, but North Paulding’s Carlyle, who hardly played in the second quarter and forced many shots trying to warm back up in the third, followed Franjga’s lead and took over for his team.

Carlyle started driving in the fourth quarter, but none of his shots found the basket. He wasn’t deterred and started reaching the foul line to score from the charity stripe. Three quick buckets later and Carlyle and the Wolfpack had erased the 6-point lead and faced the final 3:04 even at 63.

Carlyle scored 15 of his game-high 27 points in the fourth quarter, but couldn’t get his last and most important shot to fall.

Following two missed Paulding County free throws with 10.3 seconds to play and the Wolfpack down by two, Carlyle grabbed the ball a drove to the baseline. His floater in the waning seconds bounced off of the rim and North Paulding didn’t have enough time to grab a rebound and put up another shot.

Wolski said he would rather have been able to call a timeout to set a play but “off a missed free throw like that we want to get the ball out and go. We knew we were attacking the rim with a chance to get the back-side rebound.”

The rebound wasn’t handled cleanly, and Paulding County won by two points, 68-66.

North Paulding’s season is over with the loss, and six seniors will graduate. Wolski said that this team is comprised “of the best group of kids I've ever been around.”

Paulding County advances to the next round on Saturday when they will play Chapel Hill at Chapel Hill High School.

“I have a group of six seniors that I have coached for six years and it's good to be able to take them one game farther into the regional tournament,” said Cayetano.

Chapel Hill beat Paulding County by 21 points earlier in the season, but that shouldn’t deter the Patriots. They lost to North Paulding by 13 points this year as well. Anything can happen come tournament time.