Crawford County goes for first state title since 1982
ROBERTA -- The game was a few days away, and the gym had only a dozen or so people in it, mostly teenagers with the sounds of squeaking sneakers and bouncing basketballs.
Above them are a variety of banners, none of which have likely been touched in a while. They are the reminders of the last time Crawford County hung a state championship banner.
It was 1981-82, the second season in charge of the boys program for Clyde Zachery.
The Eagles then went into a drought of even making the state semifinals, finally breaking it 1998, when they lost to Seminole County.
And Friday’s opponent in the GHSA Class AA boys championship? Seminole County.
The Eagles lost 56-54 back on March 5, 1998, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Crawford County led by five, but Seminole County scored seven straight points in the final two minutes. Zachery remembered that standouts Jeffrey and Jeremy Saffold -- who Zachery said teamed for about 40 points and 20 rebounds a game -- had fouled out.
“We didn’t need any more points,” Zachery said. “We had a young man, a sophomore guard, and he went in to try to get some points and they stole the ball from him and they went down and scored.”
The time to avenge that loss and the large gap between appearances is at hand, with the Eagles taking on the Indians at 4:45 p.m. on Friday at the Macon Coliseum.
This year’s version is younger than that group, without a senior on the roster. Like those title teams in the early 1980s with Kenny Walker, this team has a focal point in lean 6-foot-4 junior guard William Jarrell.
He is known for scoring -- crack the 40-point margin a few times and you get a label -- but adds about six assists and four steals a game.
Jarrell is currently getting attention mostly from quality mid-majors like Mercer, George Mason and South Alabama, attention that will only increase if he has a fairly normal game in the championship.
But the Eagles are balanced, with Jarrell playing inside and out. He teams with 6-foot-6 Marcal Knolton inside and a slew of guards in the backcourt. It’s a balance that Zachery likes.
“(Knolton) gives us an inside game presence, and basketball is played inside out,” Zachery said. “We’re about as close to having a complete team because we do have an inside game, and we have a long-range and mid-range game from Jarrell; and guards, they get the job done.
“We’re still not quite where we want to be.”
And with no seniors, it’s hard not consider the possibilities of this team matching what Walker’s group did with consecutive state titles in 1981 and 1982. Zachery is certain, however, that his players don’t look ahead. Jarrell, in fact, confessed that he didn’t predict what’s happening.
“I didn’t think we were going to go this far this year,” he said. “I didn’t think we’d have this much chemistry.”
There have been roster changes, with center John Corbin going to Taylor County, and Knolton and guard Monkeize Moore moving away and then and returning.
The Eagles haven’t lost since Dec. 27, losing 88-85 in overtime to Class A finalist Greenville. And there have been scares before the postseason began, with Northeast giving Crawford County trouble in every meeting. The Raiders in particular may have refocused the Eagles in an 84-82 loss three weeks ago in the region tournament.
“We feel like the game we had to come back and beat Northeast here was the game that turned us around,” Zachery said. “To see that ‘You’ve got to go out and play every night.’ We were down 14 or 15 points on them in the fourth quarter.”
Crawford County’s other two wins over Northeast were 76-73 and 108-101.
“It brought us together more because we knew that if we didn’t play, we were going to lose,” Jarrell said of that third meeting. “That game, we did not play at all, that region tournament game.”
The pace and energy Friday will be big. The Eagles have failed to score 70 points only eight times this season, while the Indians can play fast or patient, the latter evidenced by the 59-56 semifinal win over Vidalia a game after outrunning Manchester 89-81.
The Eagles are pretty old-school, starting in the gym -- built in 1956 -- right out of the movie “Hoosiers” with purple bleachers, simply long planks of wood. The locker room is basically in a basement, and Zachery’s office is hidden behind a door that opens into the middle of the stands. His 6-foot-7 frame doesn’t have much room to roam in it.
And just about the only technology in that office is his cell phone. Scouring video and preparing fancy printouts of scouting reports isn’t the Crawford County way.
“I don’t watch tape,” Zachery said. “We do what we do. If you’re gonna beat us (at) what we do, then you’re just going to beat us. We don’t have the luxury of being able to watch a team one night and then, ‘I got the tape (from) Friday night, this is what they did.’
“We just do what we do.”
It all worked more than three decades ago when the Eagles were in a state title game, and it still works.
This story was originally published March 5, 2015 at 11:00 PM with the headline "Crawford County goes for first state title since 1982 ."