In the second game, the Granger boys easily won 66-46 after being down early in the game.
For the girls, there was never any doubt on the outcome of this one as the Lady Grangers led 18-8 after the first quarter and 36-26 at the intermission.
The second half saw LaGrange widen its lead in the third quarter to 56-41.
Steara Mitchell had one of her finest night as a Lady Granger, pouring in 27 points, including a trio of three pointers to lead all scorers.
Mitchell is making the most of her final year at LaGrange after getting dismissed from the team as a junior.
“I was determined since I messed up my junior year to do something my senior year,” Mitchell said. “We’re doing pretty good. We’ve got a lot to work on, but hopefully we’ll come out on top.”
Coach Jan Jones said despite the blowout win, she remains unsatisfied at the overall performance of her team on Friday and says things need to shake out quickly before region play begins in January.
“It was alright. I’m still not satisfied. I think we can play better,” Jones said after the game. “We’re still not executing on our press. We still haven’t had that close moment where we’ve had a little bit of adversity hit us and we have to answer, so that’s kind of scary going into region, because there’s going to be a lot of close region games.”
Jones was not all negative and did point out some positive things the team did.
“I thought we did some things good down the stretch,” she said. “We got on a run a couple of times, but defensively we’ve got to get into position better and we have got to rebound. We’re still not rebounding the ball like we need to. We got into foul trouble early and that hurt us.”
For the Lady Grangers, Mitchell’s 27 points was followed by teammate Breanna Grant. who scored 13, Smith had 12 and Brittany Tatum chipped in with 11 including a trio of 3-pointers.
LaGrange’s boys’ team started the game slowly as Heard County opened with a pair of monster slam dunks in the quarter while jumping out to a 12-4 lead with 2:46 left in the opening quarter.
Coach Mike Pauley then went to his bench and brought in big Joe Sanders, who went on to play some huge minutes for the Grangers as Heard County had no answer for the big man under the basket.
Sanders helped LaGrange close the gap and find itself only down by two points at the end of the first quarter.
From then on out, the Grangers never looked back.
In fact, not only did Sanders share game-high scoring honors with Rudra Kissun with 16 points each, the three top scorers for LaGrange all came off the bench to do so, including Darius Smith, who had eight points including a pair of 3-pointers.
“We tried to get the ball down low in the post so he (Pauley) put me in,” Sanders said. “I’m so big and strong, they had no power to put on me.”
Kissun was the hero of the third quarter as he gunned in three treys to add to one he nailed in the first half for four on the night.
Pauley said after the game he wasn’t worried that Heard had jumped out to a 12-4 lead in the first quarter, but he did respect the effort that was made.
“I was certainly respectful of them” Pauley said. “We have a veteran and a veteran coaching staff, but no, we weren’t worried but they had our attention. We totally respected their play and their effort. We had to start doing things to match that intensity, we had to do things to match their toughness and so they had our total respect and of course our kids ended up matching that and in the second half we just overtook them.”
LaGrange came out smoking in the second half to go up 34-28 and they extended that lead to as many as 32 points in the third quarter.
By the end of the third, coaches agreed to play a six-minute fourth quarter to expedite the ending.
LaGrange’s boys’ and girls’ host Hiram today.
The girls’ game begins at 3:30 p.m. followed by the boys at 5 p.m.
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