CHS claims first district win against Delcambre, 64-46

Published 2:00 am Friday, January 7, 2022

Catholic High School beat Delcambre in its first district game of the 2021-22 season on Tuesday behind 16 points from Jaiden Mitchell.

Mitchell convered two-thirds of his shots coming from beyond the arc. Tristan Lewis (8 points) and Sammy Stokes (7 points) also contributed to the win.

The Panthers established their lead early, outscoring Delcambre 16-10 in the first quarter. Phenomenal shooting from Mitchell extended Catholic High’s lead, and despite a strong showing from Delcambre in the second quarter, Catholic High never looked in danger of being overtaken.

According to Catholic High coach Josh Guilbeau, winning the first district game against a tough opponent was important.

“I’m happy, it’s our first district win, the first district opponent,” Guilbeau said. “They’re a good team, they fought it out until the end. I told my guys at halftime that they’ve always been tough, every year that we’ve played them. They don’t give up, they hustle, and that’s what they did tonight. We shot the ball well, but I wasn’t happy with our defense tonight. I think we could’ve done a lot better, but it’s a W and I’m happy.”

Guilbeau said that his game plan was to utilize passing discipline to break down Delcambre’s defense.

“I said that if we get a rebound, we run it, but if we don’t have it, set up into our continuity offense that we use against the 2-3, and we’ll just pass until something opens up,” he said. “We got a lot of open shots and we made those shots. Later on in the game it just opened up the zone more and more to allow us to penetrate and get a pass and then a layup.”

Delcambre head coach David Prentiss said his team knew that Catholic High was going to be a physical opponent, but hoped that his team could control the tempo at home.

“Tough loss at home,” Prentiss said. “Catholic High is a very talented, quick, good-shooting team. Any team like that is going to be very tough to compete with. We’re getting hit right now pretty bad with injuries and COVID, and we weren’t super deep to begin with, so playing with a lack of players and against these really aggressive players that we see in this district is going to be tough moving forward. If we break down film real good and get methodical about how we play in the next 10 games or so, then we have a shot to win some games in district.

“I’ve been preaching to them since we had a walkthrough to play slow, play smart. I knew it was going to be a very fast-paced game, so if we play at their pace they’ll end up winning. If we play slower, try to control the ball on our end and don’t allow them to run up and down the court on us, then we have a fighting chance. Unfortunately, they ended up winning the ‘track meet,’ they’re getting up and down the court on us. It’s difficult to play a quick team like that but, moving forward in district, that’s what we’re going to see a lot of so if we can figure it out early, we have a chance to win some games in district.”

Delcambre will continue their season on Friday when they travel to Franklin. Catholic High will travel to Ascension Episcopal in their next district contest on Friday, where the 6-6 Panthers will have a chance to move into a winning record.