GAINES HAS DOUBLE-DOUBLE IN LOSS
MURFREESBORO -- Watertown's first-ever trip to the BlueCross Basketball Championships ended Wednesday with a 53-50 overtime loss to Lake County at MTSU's Murphy Center.

A poor effort from the free throw line (8-of-21) kept the Purple Tigers from putting Lake County away when the opportunity presented itself.

Leading by eight with about a minute to go before intermission, Watertown missed two front ends of bonus opportunities and went into the locker room up 28-21 -- despite going just 4-of-14 at the charity stripe.

"We didn't take advantage of some of the opportunites we had at the line," WHS coach Matt Bradshaw said. "I thought we had erased that -- over the last 10 or 15 ballgames we've shot about 65 percent as a team."

Lake County came out of the gate in the third quarter on a mission, scoring eight unanswered points over a two minute span to take a 30-28.

The Falcons saw their lead balloon to 36-30 until buckets by Macieo Gaines, Jake Belcher and Ty Jobe evened the score at 36-all.

The game see-sawed back and forth until the final 1:56 of regulation when Watertown misfired on three shots that would have given them the lead -- including an out of bounds play with seven second remaining.

"We had a chance right there at the end, just didn't execute it," Bradshaw said, "the difference was probably the fact that they were making a third straight trip to the tournament. Give Lake County credit, they made plays with the game on the line. But I can't fault our kids, we just came up a little short."

Watertown, 30-4 on the season, never led in overtime as Lake County scored the first four points of the extra period.

Gaines was magnificent in the loss, scoring 16 points and pulling down an incredible 18 rebounds. Jobe scored 10 of his 12 points in the first half and George Theragood came off the bench for 10 points. Josiah Smith finished with four points, Ethan Moss and Ben Bain had three each and Jake Belcher rounded out the scoring with two points.

As a team, Watertown shot 20-of-52 from the field (38.5%); 2-of-13 from beyond the arc (14.4%) and 38.1% at the line.

Lake County, now 9-23 on the season, was led by 22 points from deVon Jones and 16 from Zay Coleman.

Lake County 53, Watertown 50 -- OT
Lake County 10  11  17  9  6  --  53
Watertown   14  14  10  9  3  --  50