Last January, the Southeast Bulloch boys were mired in what became a winless 2011-12 campaign.
This time around, the Yellow Jackets are right in the middle of the Region 1-AAA race.
SEB notched a critical region win last Saturday, outlasting Appling County in a 70-65 overtime thriller. Junior forward Kaelin Jones came up huge for the Jackets, netting 21 points, pulling down 18 rebounds and even drawing five charging calls.
“It was a tough game,” said Jones. “You could tell that everyone really wanted it.”
Jones and company have shown no ill-effects of last year’s nightmarish season and have done more than just held their own as a new Class AAA school in one of the tougher regions in the state. The Jackets are right in the middle of the region standings and are confident that they can get the wins necessary to return to postseason play.
“I think that winning our first game of the season got us over last year,” said Jones. “Ever since then, we’ve been focused on how good we can be. We’re just playing each game as it comes, but we know that we can be a really good team at the end.”
In a game that the Southeast Bulloch girls needed to win, one of their veteran leaders came up big.
Junior forward Philicia Batton scored 17 points and was a consistent force on the boards as the Lady Yellow Jackets pulled out a 56-51 win over Johnson of Savannah Tuesday night in Brooklet.
After dropping the first meeting between the Region 1-AAA rivals in December, Batton was determined to get some revenge. She helped the Jackets get off to a great start — scoring 12 of her points in the first half — and hit a key layup to help SEB pull away late in the third quarter.
“We knew that we could play a little better than last time,” said Batton. “This one really felt good. We worked hard all week and then played how we wanted to.”
Last season, the Jackets caught fire late in the year, but came up just a couple of wins shy of the state playoffs. This year, they are hoping to get a better seed in region tournament play to put themselves in a better position.
“I think that we’ve shown that we can compete,” said Batton. “From here, we just have to keep practicing hard to get better and go hard in every game.”