Wilson takes control in Eagles' win

COOKEVILLE -- Despite the suspension of three Shelbyville Central players last week, the Golden Eagles capped off the week with an impressive 64-58 win at Cookeville in a non-district matchup Friday night.

Junior post Bobby Wilson was unstoppable inside the paint, scoring 28 points and hauling in 12 rebounds. He also took care of business at the foul line as well, connecting on 9-of-10 free throws.

Classmate and fellow post player Seth Jarrell finished with a double-double as well with 15 points and a dozen rebounds.

Shelbyville held a huge 45-21 edge on the boards.

"Bobby, Seth and Nathan Jefferies really did a great job on the boards and really played well," Eagle coach Kevin Thomas said. "They went after rebounds on every possession.

"This past week has been the toughest week in my coaching career and I told our kids that the biggest test of character is how you handle adversity and these young men did that in this game. I thought we really played hard tonight. We dominated the boards and our young sophomores really played well and did an outstanding job."

It was a close physical battle from start to finish with Cookeville holding a 17-15 advantage when Matt Phillips hit the first of four 3-pointers in the closing seconds of the first quarter.

Jarrell scored seven points in the second stanza as the Eagles built a 33-30 lead by the break.

The Cavaliers regained the lead midway through the third quarter off a Logan Terahaggen trey to make the score 39-37. That was their last lead as the Eagles closed out the third with a 6-0 run, then added five points to start the fourth quarter to go up 48-39.

"We really buckled down on defense late in the third quarter and at the start of the fourth quarter," Thomas said. "We didn't give them many good looks at the basket and really did a good job of the boards during that part of the game."

Shelbyville closed out the game by making critical free throws down the stretch.

The Eagles were a perfect 8-for-8 at the charity stripe in the final 43 seconds with sophomore Zach Hamler nailing four of those.

"We did a great job of making free throws late in the game and that was huge," Thomas said.

Mitchell Hill led Cookeville with 23 points, including 8-of-8 at the free-throw line. Phillips added 17.

Shelbyville visits Riverdale on Monday night at 8.