Season ends in Elite Eight for Frederica Academy boys

Feb. 26—Taking on the No. 3 seeded Heritage Hawks in an Elite Eight contest, the No. 6 seeded Frederica Academy Knights struggled offensively in its 59-30 loss.

Traveling three and a half hours to play a basketball game, Frederica Academy head coach Ed Wilson didn't let the excuse of travel affect how his team played.

Being outscored in all four quarters and held to less than 10 points in three of them, the Knights couldn't get things going to stop a surging Hawks team.

"They have a high-level team first of all," Wilson said after the loss. "I think we were prepared. The guys were excited and we did get off to a really bad start offensively. We had six putbacks missed, it was a really good opportunity to score early and a couple of guys just missed them. Throughout the day we didn't shoot the ball particularly well, free throws as well. It was not a very good offensive day for us."

Not seeing shots fall all game long, it didn't help the Knights to run back on the defensive side of the court and face a hot hand in Hertiage's Max Skidmore. Dropping 27 points in front of Wilson, the Knights coach couldn't help but compare him to Chris Mullin, one of basketball's greatest shooters and a member of the Dream Team.

"He's a good player and he can really play," Wilson said. "He hurt us, he scored 27 against us."

Seeing Skidmore almost outscore the entire Knights team by himself, Wilson was still impressed with his team as they never quit.

"We just didn't play great offensively but I will say that we were active," Wilson said. "We played hard, dove all over the floor, and the kids were very active. Some nights you just don't shoot it well and this was that night. It's kind of what hurt us a little bit. We did a good job defensively, but we just struggled offensively."

Returning to the sidelines as the Knights boys basketball coach, a place where he's won back-to-back state titles, Wilson sees a lot of positives to come for the program. He couldn't help but acknowledge the two seniors he had.

"We had two really good seniors in Vic Riden and Xavier Preston," Wilson said. "I asked them pretty quickly after the game 'Do me a favor, don't hang your heads, because you want to teach the young guys to move on to the next game and the next season.' They did a good job of that and they will be missed. They were good players. There weren't many times we had to coach effort with this group, which is a good thing. We have a lot of guys coming back and we will see who can be effective for us next year. I was really proud of the guys, they gave a lot of effort today and we preached that. I was pleased with that."