Basketball talent has been common in Cochran
Cochran is the final installment of the top five basketball players from the Middle Georgia area, and I hope you have enjoyed them as much as I have enjoyed researching the area teams and players.
The top five from Cochran includes a brother combination, a player who turned down basketball scholarship offers to play football, a very good high school player who kept getting better, and a player who went pro in baseball.
Carl Hall, a 6-foot-8, 235-pound forward who played at Bleckley County in the mid 2000s, wasn’t a superstar in high school, but put some big numbers, averaging 15 points, 13 rebounds and three blocked shots a game his senior season. Playing at Northwest Florida junior college after a brief stint at Middle Georgia College, he had a breakout year in 2011, earning junior college All-America honors after averaging 17.8 points, 9.6 rebounds and 2.3 blocked shots.
He was named Panhandle Conference player of the year and was a 20ll national junior college all-tournament selection.
Hall signed a scholarship offer to Wichita State and was a mainstay on the 2013 team that advanced to the NCAA Final Four in Atlanta. As a senior, he averaged 13 points and was the team’s leading rebounder with almost seven rebounds a game. He plays professionally in Japan.
Kirk Warner was a 6-4, 205-pound forward for the Royals.
As a junior. he averaged 22 points and 10 rebounds a game, upping that to 26 points and 12 rebounds as a senior, and finishing his career with 2,019 points.
He led Bleckley County to the GHSA Class AA Final Four in 1985. Warner was on the South team in the basketball all-star game in 1985, turning down an opportunity to play in the football all-star game.
While he had several scholarship offers in basketball, he was also an all-state football player and spurned the hardwood to play football for Georgia, where he lettered four times. This fall, he will begin his 14th season as head football coach at Liberty County in Hinesville.
Frederick McNair earned his nickname “Pee Wee” from his grandmother when he was a baby, but the description didn’t fit him when he starred at Bleckley County in basketball. The 6-4, 215-pound McNair averaged 25.5 points a game during his career.
Playing as a point guard/shooting guard, he scored a career-high 54 points against Fitzgerald. As good as he was in basketball, he was better in baseball, and was a 10th-round round draft choice of the Seattle Mariners in 1989. He spent seven years in professional baseball playing in the Seattle, New York Yankees and Philadelphia organizations, making it as far as Class AAA before he retired.
Billy Padgett, a 6-2, 158-pound guard, led Cochran to its second state title in 1959 when it captured the Class A crown at the Macon City Auditorium. He was ineligible to play the first half of his senior year and without him, Cochran lost its first 13 games. When he returned after Christmas, Cochran, coached by Shelly Hayes, reeled off 13 straight wins en route to the state title as Padgett averaged 24 points a game.
In the state tournament, he averaged 36.7 points, scoring 42 against Stephens County, 38 against Pickens and 30 in the title game against Cass.
Following his senior season, he was named to the South squad for the all-star game in Atlanta. He led the South in scoring with 14 points as it rolled to a 61-38 victory. He played collegiately at both South Georgia Tech and Middle Georgia.
Billy’s younger brother, Jimmy, led Cochran to its final state title, in 1965, playing for head coach Jim Denney. He was a first-team all-state selection after averaging 26 points and 15 rebounds a game for a team that finished 26-8.
He scored 57 points in the state tournament. He started for the South team in the all-star game, scoring eight points as his team routed the North 105-77. Jimmy Padgett went on to play at Middle Georgia and average 10 points a game.
Just like the other schools where we have picked the top five, Cochran had a bevy to choose from, going back to the 1943 team coached by Norman Faircloth.
Some of the players we looked at were Roy and Leonard Coley (uncles of the Padgetts), Ken Thompson, Bobby Holland, Billy Holland, Tom Watson Dykes, Abner “Sonny” Dykes, Robert Manning, Horace Bellflower and Freddie Wimberly.
Others also considered were Ralph Cook, Pete Skipper, Leo Holland, Red Purser, Robert Lassiter, Joe Smith and John Harris.
From the 1960s forward, we thought about Terry Holder, Tony Fair, William Basby, Mario Beck, Derek Padgett and Willie McBirth.
The all-time teams show there has been a lot of basketball talent to come through Middle Georgia.
Contact Bobby Pope at bobbypop428@gmail.com
This story was originally published March 16, 2015 at 6:56 PM with the headline "Basketball talent has been common in Cochran ."