Bulldogs get revenge on Del City for earlier loss

Two of Oklahoma’s top basketball teams squared off last Friday as Class 6A’s Edmond Memorial outlasted Class 5A’s top-ranked Del City Eagles 60-48.

Memorial, ranked No. 2, got revenge for a 67-62 loss to Del City in December. Like the previous matchup, the home team was the winner as the Bulldogs improved their season record to 17-1. Del City, meanwhile, dropped to 14-5 and remains tied with Carl Albert as the top-ranked team in 5A, according to okrankings.com Despite the loss, Eagle head coach Tim Stogsdill was happy with the effort, but not the final result.

“I thought the kids played hard tonight. This is a tough environment to play in. Memorial is a championship caliber team that has a chance to win the state championship again in 6A,” he said.

The Bulldogs won the 6A championship last season with a 53-43 win over the Midwest City Bombers.

“You just can’t make mistakes against them (Edmond Memorial). You have to take care of the basketball and they capitalized on our mistakes. I’m very proud of our boys. They played their tails off tonight and we just came up a little short. We snuck up on them when we were at our place but they were ready to play tonight.”

Memorial outscored the Eagles by two points in each of the first three quarters, and the Eagles were still within striking distance at the start of the fourth quarter, 42-36.

But in the final frame the Bulldogs were able to stretch their lead and held their largest advantage at 48-38 with 6:21 left in the game. Del City cut Memorial’s lead to five, 48-43, less than a minute later on a pair of field goals, one a threepointer, but that was as close as the Eagles would get.

“I thought overall team wise we could have just chucked it in and it could have gotten ugly.” Stogsdill said, “But we fought and fought and fought and I don’t think the score there at the end tells the story of the whole game. It was a good, hardfought game and they knew they were in a dog fight. It was a good team effort. We didn’t quit and I was proud of that. We will build on this and we will get better from this. There are good teams in 5A, but we aren’t going to see anyone better than that in 5A.”

For the game, the Eagles were led by Brett Cannon with 15 points followed by three players with eight points each, AJ Holland, Jamal Moseley and Steffon Herd. Deaunte Herd added seven and Keith Glover rounded out the scoring with two.

The Bulldogs were led by Woodard brothers James and Jordan Woodard, with 22 and 18 points, respectively. The two scored 25 of Memorial’s 29 second-half points. Terrell Savala contributed nine followed by Aaron Young with five, Jordan Thomas with four and Reggie Sloan with two.

The Bulldogs also had an advantage at the free throw line, hitting 12 of 15 charity shots. On the other end, Del City connected on two of five free throws for the game.