By Robert Hudson

The Selma Times-Journal

 

Three local boys basketball teams are preparing for one last showdown against each other before heading into the Christmas break.

Southside will host a Christmas tournament on its campus on Friday and Saturday, Dec. 23-24, which will include local teams Selma and Keith, along with 3A school Montgomery Academy.

On Friday, Southside will play Montgomery Academy at 6 p.m. followed by Selma and Keith at 7:15 p.m.

On Saturday, Montgomery Academy will play the winner or loser of Keith and Selma at 2 p.m. followed by Southside versus the other team at 3:15 p.m.

Southside head basketball coach Cedric Brown said the goal for his Panthers (8-5, 2-0) will be to continue to improve.

“The goal for me is still to just get better,” Brown said. “To play the talent of Keith and Selma, the talent they bring to the table is intriguing. Once we play them, our guys always want to get up for those games and we want to prepare our guys for postseason play.”

The Keith Bears (5-7, 2-0) will be the smallest school in the tournament in terms of classification (1A), but that’s something Bears’ head coach Tommy Tisdale said will help them prepare for the area tournament.

“When we choose a tournament to go to, 90 percent of the time we’re going to be the smallest school in classification, however, I never use it as an excuse,” Tisdale said. “We want to have our kids prepared for what’s to come in February. We had a glimpse of it earlier when we went on the road for a Thanksgiving tournament.”

Tisdale said the tournament will also give Keith a chance to see how much it has improved since a 64-57 loss to Southside and a one point and two point loss to Selma earlier in the season.

“We’ve played Southside already, we’ve played Selma already, and we kind of measure ourselves against those squads,” Tisdale said. “Going into this tournament, we want to see how much we’ve improved since the last time we played those guys and we want to see how we can adjust in a back-to-back situation, playing Friday and then Saturday with no practice time. It gets you ready for the same situation you’ll see in an area tournament.”

Selma head coach Woodie Jackson will lead the class 5A Saints (6-6, 1-1) into the tournament.

Jackson agreed that classification doesn’t matter, especially when rivals meet on the court.

“It’s always going to be competitive and any given night any team can win because of the rivalries,” Jackson said. “It doesn’t matter about classification. Both those schools are always going to play us very hard. We have to play on the next level to even compete with them because they’re going to play real hard against us.”