VEEDERSBURG — The Bi-County Tournament is always a great way for Covington, Attica, Seeger, and Fountain Central to get some competition against each other. Wednesday night was the opening round of the annual tournament for the Mustangs who hosted Seeger. In the girls contest FC got a re-match vs the Patriots from back on Dec. 6 (a 55-34 loss) and once again the Lady Patriots came out on top, this time in a much closer contest as FC fell 40-26.
In the highly anticipated boys game between the No. 4 ranked 5-0 Mustangs and the 6-1 Patriots, FC came away with a 49-36 win in their first true test of the season to stay unbeaten.
Fountain Central boys basketball are the No. 4 ranked team in Class A as of the most recent AP poll that was released on Tuesday. While it’s nice to be recognized FC had its first true test of the season against the Patriots and while it wasn’t pretty at times, the Mustangs passed and came out on top.
In the 49-36 win, as they typically do, the Mustangs came out of the gates with focus, energy, and intensity as they led the Patriots 13-2 before eventually holding a 19-7 lead after one quarter. Then the Patriots responded as they cooled down FC and forced numerous turnovers. While the offense took awhile to get going, the Mustangs still ended the quarter on a 7-0 run to take a 28-15 lead into the locker room. In the second half, Seeger cut the lead to 36-28 after three, but the Mustangs responded and held their ground in the final eight minutes to hold on for the victory to stay unbeaten as they improve to 6-0.
“We knew that Seeger was just going to keep grinding away to make this thing a battle,” Mustang coach Greg Dean said. “ Our guys took that original shot from them and just kept going. We always stayed tough and that’s what was important. We made some mistakes and some not good decisions and we have to clean that stuff up. At the end of the day we defended like crazy tonight and that helped carry us.”
The Mustangs coming in were giving up just 29 points per game. It’s been their defense that has helped them carry them to this undefeated start. Seeger’s leading scorer in senior Owen Snedeker came into the game averaging 18 points per game. The Mustangs held him to eight as senior Luke Foxworthy was tasked with guarding him. Dean gave all the praise to Foxworhty after the game.
“Luke’s a guy that we put on opposing teams best player no matter what usually,” Dean said. “He loves to defend and loves to guard people like he does. It’s always great to have a guys like Luke who his sole focus is to stop the other teams best player and he was big on that end tonight for us.”
The Mustangs will play Covington tomorrow at 3 pm at Fountain Central for the championship and this is one of the early season goals that Dean set out for his team, and now they’re just one win away.
“We got this one which was an emotional one,” he said. “We have to put this in our pocket and take it with us and get ready to battle against Covington because they want it just as bad as we do. You don’t get these chances to win championships all the time so when you do you have to take advantage of it.”
