STATESBORO – The Statesboro Blue Devils fall short to the Dutchtown Bulldogs 55-42 to end their 2023-2024 season.
In the first quarter, the Dutchtown Bulldogs came out to a commanding 14-6 lead at the end of the first. The Blue Devils seemed to play a little timid and nervous to start out the game.
Statesboro seemed to settle into the game in the second quarter. The Blue Devils realized they had to play more physically with the Bulldogs in the paint. By doing so, that opened up the perimeter for the guards to start making shots.
The Blue Devils suffered a huge loss in senior Kam Mikell who got hurt early in the third quarter which took a huge presence off the floor for the Blue Devils. Mikell was tended to by the training staff and tried to come back into the game, but wasn’t able to put pressure on his knee and had to sit down for the rest of the game. Without that aggressive presence that Mikell brought, the Devils struggled to contain the Bulldogs in the paint and let the game get away from them.
In the fourth quarter the Blue Devils started to heat up a bit making shots, which is the ultimate goal they needed to do: put points on the board. They struggled to execute, but freshman Devin Mikell and junior Muhammad Shareef came off the bench and gave the Blue Devils some much needed points, but there wasn’t enough time on the clock for them to really get started.
Head coach Keith Legree talked a lot about how his team struggled to execute and that was the deciding factor for the game.
“We executed the first three minutes and after that we didn’t do anything we worked on at practice,” LeGree said. “In this time of year, that’s what it boils down too.”
The leading scorers for the Blue Devils were Kam Mikell, Deivn Mikell and Raylin Grant all finishing with eight points on the night. Camdyn Wilkerson finished the game with five points, Mike Goodman, DJ Brown and Muhammad Shareef all finished with four points on the night, and Jacaiden Cone had one point off a free throw to add to the score.
Coach Legree had a great message for his seniors as well as the freshmen, sophomores and juniors that’ll be back next season.
“With the seniors you can ask for a better ending, but you can’t ask for a better season,” Legree said. “This is a good basketball team and they’ve been good all year. At the end of the day, our juniors gotta learn from this. We’ve seen this stuff before and we gotta take the proper steps with dedicating ourselves even more to the game.”
The Blue Devils finished 8-2 in the region and 21-5 overall. They received the region accolades of: Region Coach of the Year (Keith Legree), Region Player of the Year (Kam Mikell), Freshman Player of the Year (Devin Mikell), First Team All-Region (Raylin Grant, DJ Brown), Second Team All-Region (Jacaiden Cone, Camdyn Wilkerson), and Region Honorable Mentions (Mike Goodman, AK Watkins).
