FORT MOORE, Ga. –
Defense proved the deciding factor for eight military teams as the Armed Forces Basketball Championship kicked off with a bang Friday.
The first game of the day was a duel in the women’s match-up between Army and the Marine Corps.
Nerves settled down as Army’s Tatiana Wayne, a first lieutenant stationed at Fort Moore, scored first off of a turnover.
The Marine Corps women were up 17-14 at halftime, but Army went on a 14-point run to take the lead.
Both teams showed grit, battling for position and possession in the paint, and Army came out victorious, 58-50.
“I like how my girls came back on defense. They came back and won that game,” said Army women’s coach Capt. Cutosha Dilworth. “We had to tighten up a little bit. Once the defense got together then all things worked out.”
Marine Corps women’s coach Christopher Madden said, “We did some great things today, [though] we’ve got to clean some stuff up. We played well for four quarters, and that’s something that … we’ve struggled with.”
Madden, a chief warrant officer 2, said the Marine women gave it everything they had.
Sgt. Precious Williams, who is stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, scored 17 points to lead Army. 1st Lt. Kaleigh D’Arcy, who is stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, led the Corps with 16 points.
In the first men’s game of the tournament, Army came out victorious again, defeating the Marine Corps 88-79.
The Army hit a three-pointer to begin play, then stretched its lead to 15 before the Corps got on the scoreboard at the 15:07 mark.
True to form, though, the Corps didn’t give up and clawed back into the game, knotting the score in the latter half of the second period.
“Defensively, we played excellent basketball. Offensively, we had some mental lapses,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Wayne Wolcott, coach of the Army men’s team.
Wolcott said his guards were trying to feed the ball to the big men in the paint, but that initially didn’t work against the Marines. “Once we got the bigs touching, everything came to fruition and we played good basketball,” he said.
Staff Sgt. Donald Tention, stationed at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, scored 22 points to lead the Army men. 1st Lt. Colton Ray, stationed at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, made nine of 10 free throws for the Army.
Capt. Brandon Mitchell, coach of the Marines, said some young men on his team got valuable minutes in the game, which should pay off in the future. “I would have liked to close some possessions out defensively, but I thought they had a pretty good day.”
1st Lt. John Carter, from Camp Pendleton, California, made nine of 12 free throws and was the leading scorer for the Marine Corps with 23 points. Lance Cpl. Kerron Lebron had multiple three-point shots and scored 16 for the Corps.
Mitchell said Lebron “is a young guy who stepped up today and found his groove.”
In game three of the first night of the double, round-robin championship, the Air Force women defeated the Navy women 56-41.
Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Syreeta Bromfield, the Navy coach, said,” Where do I start? I’ll chalk it up to first-game jitters.”
The Navy women were without 6-foot Ensign Danielle Reinwald, who was on crutches after an injury a couple of days ago.
“That affected us big time,” Bromfield said.
Karlin Immel was the leading scorer for Air Force with 10 points.
Tech. Sgt James Lewis, coach of the Air Force women’s team, said the game went well, and the first half featured what he called a great defensive effort.
“Everybody worked together well. Defense is where we won the game in the first half.”
The evening’s final game saw the Air Force men hosting Navy.
Navy proved dominant throughout the game, leading 54-33 at halftime. Air Force outscored Navy 47-37 in the second half, but Navy proved too dominant, winning 91-80.
Navy Coach Micah Bonner said coaches want to get a win in the first game of the championship. “I feel pretty good… I would have liked to see my team close out a little bit better than they did. We jumped out to a big lead, but this is a military tournament, and people are going to fight until the end. I liked the resilience of my team bouncing back and finishing the game the way they are supposed to.”
Air Force Coach Master Sgt. Ernest Darnell said a positive he takes away from the game is “we showed some grit at the end of the game. It just took us a while to get going. We came out extremely flat and we just got bullied. They wanted that one more than us,” he said.
“We were able to go out there and cut the lead down from 25 to, I think we had it to six on the last layup that meant something. We could have thrown in the towel and lost by 40, but we showed some resolve and poise,” Darnell said.
Play continues in the championship Saturday afternoon.