Dixon's dunk lifts Summit to 56-49 win over Antioch
FRANKLIN — The Summit boys basketball team isn’t the most vocal group.
That was the case when the Spartans were steamrolling through their early-season competition to the tune of a program-best 20-2 start, and it was especially true during the squad’s rocky regular-season finish.
“It’s something we’ve struggled with all year,” said first-year coach Josh Goodwin, whose Spartans lost three of their final four regular-season games before dropping last week’s district tournament semifinal to Independence. “We have a relatively quiet group of guys, and it’s tough to create that environment where everybody is excited because it’s just not their personalities.”
Junior Demontay Dixon seemed to solve that problem Saturday.
Dixon, perhaps the most soft-spoken of the bunch, threw down a powerful one-handed slam early in the fourth-quarter of Summit’s Region 6-AAA quarterfinal matchup with Antioch, igniting the Spartans in a style seldom seen this season.
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"A play like that happened and it created that for us," Goodwin said of Dixon’s dunk, which sparked a 7-0 run and helped the Spartans secure their first-ever region tournament win, 56-49 over the Bears. “That was a big turning point,”
“I felt like it brought more energy to the entire gym really” added Dixon, who finished with a game-high 19 points.
Navy signee John Carter tallied 15 points for Summit (23-6), which will square off with rival Independence for the fourth time this season in a Region 6-AAA semifinal at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Centennial. Junior Tai Carder scored eight of his 10 points in the decisive fourth quarter.
“Somebody was going to be on the short end of the stick,” Goodwin said. “Nobody wants the season to end that way, and I thought with our two districts forming this region that it was going to be a battle regardless of who we got matched up with. It just worked out well for us.”
For Antioch coach Casey Smith, Saturday’s loss was simple.
“This time of year we put two things on the board in our locker room — turnovers and free throws” Smith said. “Those will make the game, and we were one the wrong side on both of those.”
Tre’Shon Evans finished with a team-high 13 for Antioch (22-6), which shot just 2-for-8 from the free-throw line in the second half, while Bakri Gubara and Tylus Bowden each added 10. Jeremiah Alexander, the team’s leading scorer, was held to just seven points before fouling out in the fourth quarter of the season-ending defeat.
ReachMichael Murphy at 615-269-8262 and on Twitter@Murph_TNsports.