West Limestone's Braden Tuten looks to shoot as Clements' Lucas Bailey defends Friday. Tuten scored 24 points as the Wildcats won 66-58.

One night after overcoming a 12-point deficit in the fourth quarter to defeat Ardmore in overtime, West Limestone faced the opposite situation against Clements, as the Wildcats blew a 14-point third-quarter lead before recovering in the final minutes to pull out a 66-58 victory on Friday night.

“Before the season, I didn’t know if we could win an ugly game, and now we’ve won two of them in a row,” West Limestone coach Justin Taylor said. “We’ve just been out of sync on offense. We’ve got four guys just in from football who haven’t hardly practiced. But we’ve been able to win when it’s not pretty, so we’ll take it.”

West Limestone led 33-25 at halftime and scored the first six points of the third quarter to extend the lead to 39-25 before Clements began its comeback.

The Colts answered with a 13-1 run to cut the lead to two points and trailed just 44-41 at the end of the third quarter.

Clements finally tied the game at 50 with 5:55 remaining when Ryland Kirk nailed a 3-point shot. Braden Tuten answered with a 3-pointer of his own to give the Wildcats the lead back.

The Colts tied the score again at 56 a few minutes later with a Kaleb Fletcher basket, but Tuten once again hit a big shot to put West Limestone in front. The Wildcats then stole the ball on Clements’ next possession, which led to a transition layup by Alex Casteel to put West up 60-56.

Clements got to within 60-58, but could get no closer, as the Wildcats hit six free throws in the final minute to ice the game.

“It’s tough to lose that lead, and once they tied it up it’s easy for the players to tighten up, but they were able to deal with it,” Taylor said.

Tuten led West Limestone with 24 points, including 10 in the fourth quarter when the game got tight.

“Every time we needed a basket, he got one to stretch the lead back out,” Taylor said. “That’s what we expect from him.”

Casteel added 17 points for West Limestone in the win. Clements was led by Austin Harvell with 14 points, Fletcher with 12 and Parker Hand and Lucas Bailey with 11 each.

Clements girls 44, West Limestone 33

Clements might not have had a great offensive showing on Friday against West Limestone, but the Colts defense was plenty good enough to get a comfortable win.

Clements held West to just nine points in the first half and seven points in the fourth quarter in taking the 11-point victory.

Clements coach Zach Meadows was especially pleased with Abby Craig, who had the assignment of guarding West Limestone point guard and leading scorer Cassidy Winter. Winter, who had scored 30 points the previous night against Ardmore, did get 20 points, but she only had two points in the first half, allowing Clements to take a lead that would never seriously be threatened.

“Abby Craig did a great job of defending,” Meadows said. “She guarded their point guard and did a great job. West Limestone is a physical team, so we had to go with a more physical lineup. I give props to Abby; she got it done on defense.”

Clements led 17-9 at halftime, but West finally got some offense going in the third quarter, scoring 17 points, with Winter scoring 13 of her 20 points in that quarter. The Colts led 31-26 after the third quarter but outscored West Limestone 13-7 in the final period to pull away for the win.

In addition to Winter’s 20 points, Riley Fisk scored six for the Wildcats.

Emrey McGill led Clements with 20 points, while Craig and Lily Miller both scored seven for the Colts.