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By Jed Blackwell

 

You can’t win them all if you don’t win the first one.

New Polk County boys basketball coach Josh Money still has a chance.

The Wolverines won Money’s debut on Tuesday with a thrilling fourth-quarter comeback, beating Madison 72-66 to open the season 1-0.

“Good gracious,” Money said. “My heart rate might be a little too fast right now for somebody that didn’t run at all during that game. You could tell our legs were under us there in the fourth quarter. We made a couple of free throws, they missed a couple on their end, and that really helped us.”

Down by as many as 10 in the game, and trailing by nine with just under four minutes to play in the third quarter, Polk County chipped away at the Patriots’ lead, pulling to within 47-43 on Aaron Jackson’s free throw with nine seconds left.

Then they kicked the door in.

Polk County stormed out of the quarter break. Khristian Littlejohn made a quick bucket, then made another, giving the Wolverines their first lead since the first play of the second quarter. Ja Gary made a layup on a pretty feed from Jackson, and Gunnar Alm followed with a bucket.

Madison stopped the bleeding with a 3-pointer from Jason Eighmey, but Polk again scored seven of the game’s next nine points. Jackson had a follow, Alm made a bucket-and-1 and Jayce Edwards scored with 4:45 to play, and suddenly the Wolverines were up 58-52.

The run was keyed in part by an aggressive, trapping defense. The Wolverines waited to use it, Money said, precisely because they hadn’t used it.

“We just got some of our soccer guys back,” he said. “Football was a little late. We’d literally worked on it once. We kept going over it, asked them if they were comfortable with it, and we went ahead and got in it. It worked for us, and the good news is it’ll only get better.”

It was a battle the rest of the way. Madison twice cut the lead to two, at 3:00 and again at 2:23. But that’s as close as the Patriots could get. Alm and Jackson made play after play down the stretch, but so did the rest of the Wolverines. Dallas Littlejohn had a steal and made a layup. Gary made a couple of big plays and two huge free throws in the closing seconds. Six different Polk County players scored in the fourth quarter, with Alm scoring 11 of his 19 in the frame.

“That’s something we talked about a lot,” Money said. “We don’t want one person or even two being our only scorers. We want to spread 6-8-10 points to six or seven people. We were able to share the ball and come back and we were victorious.”

Jackson led all scorers with 25, including Polk County’s first eight points and nine total in the first quarter as the Wolverines built a 12-11 lead. He added seven rebounds, two assists and three steals. Alm’s 19 came with two assists and five steals. Dallas Littlejohn, Khristian Littlejohn and Gary had eight points each.

Madison’s Gavin Gault finished with 23, including an eight-point second quarter that helped the Patriots forge a 33-25 halftime advantage.