Preview: Sumner Stingrays vs. Wharton Wildcats
Sumner has enjoyed a two-game homestand but will soon have to dust off their road jerseys. They will square off against the Wharton Wildcats at 8:00 p.m. on Friday. Hopefully Sumner focused on turnovers this week since the team gave up 14 on Wednesday.
Sumner stacked an eighth blowout win onto their ever-increasing hoard. They put the hurt on Freedom with a sharp 59-34 win. Sumner pushed the score to 41-21 by the end of the third, a deficit Freedom had little chance of recovering from.
Isaiah Williams and Devin Baker were among the main playmakers for Sumner as the former scored ten points along with nine rebounds and the latter scored 13 points along with six assists and five rebounds. Another player making a difference was Jabory Nelson, who scored seven points.
Meanwhile, Wharton entered their tilt with Hillsborough with five consecutive wins but they'll enter their next game with six. Wharton came out on top against Hillsborough by a score of 43-32 on Tuesday. Given Wharton's advantage in MaxPreps' Florida basketball rankings (they are ranked 147th, while Hillsborough is ranked 342nd), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.
Sumner's win bumped their record up to 14-7. As for Wharton, they are on a roll lately: they've won eight of their last nine matches, which provided a massive bump to their 14-7 record this season.
Sumner was dealt a bruising 50-11 defeat at the hands of Wharton in their previous meeting back in February of 2022. The match was all but decided by halftime, at which point Sumner was down 30-6.
