The Crooms Academy Panthers will head out on the road to face off against the First Baptist Christian Academy Crusaders at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Hopefully Crooms Academy focused on turnovers this week since the team gave up 21 on Friday.
Crooms Academy pushed their score all the way to 63, but even that wasn't enough to win. They took a 68-63 hit to the loss column at the hands of First Academy. Crooms Academy has now taken an 'L' in back-to-back games.
Jayden Aristile put forth a good effort for the losing side as he scored 26 points along with 7 steals and 6 rebounds. He scored a full 41.3% of Crooms Academy's points, the second time in a row he's earned more than a third of the team's points. Another player making a difference was D'Elio Cestero, who scored 15 points along with 6 rebounds.
First Baptist Christian Academy played against Beacon of Hope Christian and won via forfeit.
First Baptist Christian Academy's win on Tuesday was the result of several impressive offensive performances. One of the most notable came from CJ Giles, who scored 31 points. The team also got some help courtesy of Solomon Williams, who dropped a double-double on 19 points and 15 rebounds.
The losses dropped Crooms Academy to 0-2 and First Academy to 2-1.
Crooms Academy couldn't quite finish off First Baptist Christian Academy in their previous matchup back in January of 2020 and fell 58-55. Thankfully for Crooms Academy, Doug Merry (who dropped a double-double on 27 points and 17 rebounds) won't be suiting up this time. Will that be enough to change the final result? There's only one way to find out.
