JaColby Cooper and The Pass That Broke Basketball

Senior’s dish indicative of state-bound Tornadoes

Jamir Dean opens his account with a dunk in Alcoa’s sectional championship win over Cumberland Gap.

By Stefan Cooper
Editor
Blount Press Row

The timing, the touch, three defenders in the way, the angle, JaColby Cooper uncorked the mother of all fast-break feeds in Alcoa’s sectional triumph on Monday.

(Editor: It looked like Spiderman threading the needle with one of his webs to get that thing in there. You’ll see.)

Condis Cherry dutifully finished it off with a reverse layup, the Tornadoes doing much the same in a 75-30 drubbing of Cumberland Gap to clinch a berth in The BlueCross Basketball Championships this week in Murfreesboro.

Alcoa (21-13) meets Fayette-Ware (26-4) in a Class 3A state tournament quarterfinal on Wednesday at Middle Tennessee State University.

Tipoff is 7:15 p.m. CST.

To view the Class 3A brackets, click here.

“I think we’re prepared,” junior forward Jamir Dean said. “Our schedule, the games we’ve played, the teams we’ve played, they were tough teams. We’re prepared for this moment.”

Along with being one of the great helpers we’ve ever seen in a high school basketball game — or any other, for that matter — Cooper’s assist was the lead highlight in a theme.

These Tornadoes can run. They can dunk. Jamir Dean had three of them, Jay Kirk and Kam Lanxter one each.

They can shoot the three.

All that withstanding, it’s the way they can pass the ball with lightning-fast efficiency that sets them apart.

This year’s state tournament berth is Alcoa’s fourth consecutive and first since moving up a class to 3A.

“I feel good about our chances,” Kirk said. “This team’s great. We’re a brotherhood. We all love each other, and we’re going back and, hopefully, win that thing.”

Is that brotherhood enough to win Alcoa its third state title in the Ryan Collins era? We shall see, but we wouldn’t bet against it.

“The first words that come to mind are, ‘Do your job,'” Collins said, “and do your job starts on the defensive end. We talk a lot about ‘KYP,’ know your personnel, what they can do and what they can’t do.

“We were really good defensively.

“(Cumberland Gap) was a really good offensive team, and I think we just kind of took them out of everything they wanted to do.”

Offensively, the reason the passing game carries so much weight with these Tornadoes is so many of them can score. Dean, along with his three slams, paced Alcoa with a game-high 18 points in the rout of the Jets, including a pair of third-quarter strikes from downtown.

Kirk followed him into double figures with 13, including a trey. Cherry, the Tornado point guard, had 12 and also hit twice from three. Jabriel Koko had nine, including one of the wildest double-crossover drives you’re ever going to see.

All told, nine Tornadoes found their way into Bud Cooper’s scorebook, with Tyrone Smith and Jaylen Penson going for six each, Penson on a couple of 3s.

“I think this team has what it takes,” Collins said. “I have a lot of belief in them. At the same time, you don’t win with just talent. We’ve got to go in and make sure we’re checking all the boxes and all the other stuff.”