This past week was not a good one for the Seymour basketball program.  Both the boys and the girls teams lost their first district games and were eliminated from the post season tournament.
The Eagles lost to county rival Sevier County by a score of 46-30.  The District 2-AAA game was played at Morristown East High School last Thursday night.
The game started slow and never did really get untracked offensively.  Seymour was the number 8 seed, while Sevier County was the number 1 seed.  Both teams looked tentative at first probably because it was the 1st round of the opening tournament game.
The Smoky Bears opened up an 11point lead in the second quarter and maintained that lead throughout the rest of the game. Even though Seymour’s record was 7-21 while  winning only two district games, head coach Brian Jessie seemed optimistic for the future, “I told the kids that life’s not fair, and I’m their third coach in the last three years.  When I took over there was turmoil, but by the end of the year, we turned out to be a very competitive team.”   The Eagles were very competitive the entire season as most games went down to the wire.  Their record was definitely not an indicator of how competitive they really were.
“These kids are wonderful.  I’m very proud of them.  We accomplished some things this year.  It takes baby steps to build something and that’s what we’re doing.  We’ll get back to work and focus on individual skills, skills to fit the program to build a foundation and not have to learn a new system on the fly like we did this year.  These kids have shown a lot of character and they’ve bought into the system.  They’ve never got their heads down and got better by the end of the year.  We’ve started to build the foundation.  I told the boys that I’m not going anywhere; not until we win a championship at Seymour.”
Skylar Brown led Seymour with 9 points, Alex Lambert had 7, Jordan Lee with 4, Max Harrell and Tyler Tilson had 3, Garrett Hillard and Nathan Cosler had 2 apiece.
A couple of days earlier, the Lady Eagles came up short also; but the game was much closer than the boys.
The number 4 seed Seymour Lady Eagles lost to number 5 seed Morristown East by a score of 64-61.  It was a disappointing loss for the Lady Eagles in the first round of the District 2-AAA Tournament held in Morristown also.
The game went back and forth; start to finish with neither team ever gaining control.  The game went right down to the wire and was tied at 60 all with 48 seconds to go.
Seymour senior point guard Casie Cowan put the Lady Eagles ahead 61-60 with 25 seconds to go after hitting a free throw.
With 17 seconds to go, Orrick of Morristown East missed both free throws but got her own rebound after no player from Seymour boxed out.  The ball went out of bounds and possession went to the Lady Hurricanes under their own goal.
A Seymour rebound would have probably given Seymour the win.
Morristown East scored on the ensuing possession making the score 62-61. 
Seymour had one last chance but turned the ball over and the game was over; as well as their season. The Lady Hurricanes added two more insurance points to end the game.
The Lady Eagles missed 5 free throws in the fourth quarter.  Asked about the game, Seymour head coach Andy Rines responded, “I’m very disappointed, because we did it to ourselves.  We didn’t block out the shooter (on the last fee throw with the score 61-60) and I don’t understand why that happened.”  He then spoke about the missed free throws in the fourth quarter, “You just can’t miss that many free throws against a good team and expect to win it.”
Casie Cowan ended her fantastic high school basketball career with the game high 27 points followed by Ballard with 16, Brown 8, Clark 4, Norman and Davis finished with 3 points each.
The Seymour Herald would like to thank Coach Brian Jessie and Coach Andy Rines for all their cooperation throughout this season.  Thank you for a job well done.

... read the rest of the story by Subscribing now.