Sports Editor

The Mustangs of Stanhope Elmore won the right to host the Area Tournament this year, but that didn’t assure them of anything Tuesday night.

Charles Henderson came in and reestablished their Area dominance with a 65-54 win over the Mustangs in the Tournament title game and as a reward they will host the Sub-Regional coming up Friday night.

Most of the talk afterwards was about the lack of turnovers by the Trojans. In their current three-game losing streak they have taken care of the ball and the pay off is obvious.

"We shot the ball fairly well and we played smarter ball," CHHS head coach Carl Hollis said. "We were tougher and cut down on the turnovers. We’re learning not to rush things. We need to let our game come to us and move the ball with patience."

"We cut our turnovers down these last couple of ball games," guard Rory Murphy said. "We’ve been giving games away with turnovers late in the game. When we cut that down we feel confident in our ability to win.

"We also came out more intense and played harder defense the entire game," he continued. "That was the big difference. We shot better and played better as a team in this game than in previous games."

The Trojans only turned the ball over 11 times in the game and beat the Stanhope press with ease throughout.

CHHS also shot the ball well. They hit the shots they needed in the first half taking a 36-29 win into the locker room and in the second half hit their free throws down the stretch with ease to seal the victory.

The Trojans were 13-of-15 at the charity stripe accounting for most of their points in the fourth quarter.

Center Marcus Williams hit for 19 while Murphy led with 20. Freshman Lakory Daniels continued his outstanding play in the later stages of the season and in the Area tournament hitting for 11.

In their only Area loss of the year the Trojans were without the assistance of Williams, that led to an 80-63 loss, but Williams redeemed himself in the tournament earning Most Valuable Player honors scoring 14 against Wetumpka and notching a double-double against Stanhope.

"Marcus isn’t a talkative person, but he goes out and performs," teammate Joey Hollis said of Williams. "He’s the action man. He’s definitely one of the guys that kept us in ball games."

Williams was joined on the All-Tournament team by Murphy and Hollis.

Now the Trojans will host their Sub-Regional against Sylacauga Friday. The stress of win and your in and lose and your out is obviously a concern, but the Trojans, finishing with a losing regular season record, are simply out to redeem themselves and push it to the next level.

"It’s sort of become a tradition at Charles Henderson to win the Area, but this is not what we want," Murphy said at a recent practice. "We want the Sub-State, we want to get to Troy State and we we want to keep rolling from there to get back to state. We never gave up hope as a team. Some people may have given up on us, but as a team we always stayed positive about our season. How we finish it is how we define our season, not how we started."

"I was joyous after that game, but I couldn’t get to joyous because we’ve got to find a way to win Friday night," coach Hollis said. "It’s going to be a tough game friday night. Somebody has to go down and nobody wants to, especially when you’re this close."