McKenzie is 0-4 against Luverne since December of 2018 but they'll have a chance to close the gap a little bit on Tuesday. The McKenzie Tigers are on the road again and play against the Luverne Tigers at 7:00 p.m. on December 12th. Hopefully McKenzie focused on turnovers this week since the team gave up 17 on Friday.
While it was all tied up 0-0 at halftime, McKenzie was not quite Straughn's equal in the second half on Friday. McKenzie fell 52-43 to Straughn.
The loss doesn't tell the whole story though, as several players had good games. One of the most active was Jaylen Mcmillian, who scored 11 points along with 6 rebounds. The match was his fifth in a row with at least ten points. The team also got some help courtesy of Jay Jackson, who dropped a double-double on 13 points and 14 rebounds.
Meanwhile, Luverne waltzed into Saturday's match with two straight wins but they left with three. They came out on top against Paxton by a score of 47-40. Given Luverne's advantage in MaxPreps's basketball rankings in their respective home states (they are ranked 141st in Alabama, while Paxton is ranked 313th in Florida), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.
Brantley's victory bumped their season record to 0-0 while McKenzie's defeat dropped theirs to 3-1.
McKenzie couldn't quite finish off Luverne when the teams last played back in December of 2022 and fell 63-60. Can McKenzie avenge their defeat or is history doomed to repeat itself? We'll find out soon enough.
