Sulphur struggled against two good teams last week, as the Dogs dropped both games against Madill and Plainview.
The Dogs fell at No. 8 Madill 63-33 last Tuesday and lost 78-51 at Plainview on Friday.
“We ran into two good teams that had their best shooting nights of the season,” said Sulphur head coach Grant Bates.
The Dogs (8-11) played hard but couldn’t overcome experience and offensive execution from both Madill and Plainview.
“Both of those teams have a senior player that is competing for our conference MVP and going to play college basketball,” Bates said. “They both played really well against us and had solid games.”
Bates liked the way his team competed even in the losses.
“We were competitive in stretches, but just didn’t get it done defensively on either night,” he said. “We have guys that are continuing to work hard and doing everything they can to improve to get us out of this tough stretch.”
The coach is happy with his team’s dedication and hopes the improvement will come as the playoffs near.
“As a coach, I’m happy with our commitment,” he said. “We just have to stay after it day-byday and work on ourselves to get things to start going our way.”
Sulphur was at Marietta on Tuesday and will be at Dickson on Friday.
Madill 63, Sulphur 33
Madill got off to a hot start last Tuesday and put enough distance between them and Sulphur to keep the game out of reach.
The Wildcats led 16-2 after a quarter and 29-14 at halftime.
Madil shot 56% from the floor and 9-of-17 (53%) from three in the win.
They extended their lead to 51-25 through three quarters.
Madill led 26-4 in paint scoring, 28-15 on the glass, and 14-9 in points off turnovers.
Bridge Barrett led the Dogs in scoring with 14 points.
Sulphur shot just 30% from the floor in the loss.
Plainview 78, Sulphur 51 The Dogs ran into another hot-shooting offense last Friday in the loss to Plainview.
The Indians led 22-16 after a quarter and 40-30 at halftime.
In the 3rd is where the Indians really put things away, pushing the lead out to 62-39.
Plainview shot 46% from the floor and 10-of-27 (37%) from three.
The Dogs shot just 37% from the floor and 35% from three.
Plainview had an advantage in fastbreak points (14-0), paint scoring (30-16), second chance points (11-6) and turned Sulphur over 12 times to get a 10-4 edge in points off of.
Barrett led the Dogs again with 15 points, five rebounds and three assists.
Devin Willis had 12 points and four boards in the loss.
