Terrebonne, Thibodaux near top of district standings

The Terrebonne Tigers’ boy’s basketball team was at a crossroads early in the season.

The team started the year just 4-8 and many wondered what district play would hold for the Tigers – who advanced all the way to the 5A State Quarterfinals last season.

But the New Year has brought new fortune to Terrebonne and the team has rolled to a 4-1 record to start district play, putting them near the top of the Bayou District standings.

“We’re coming around,” said Terrebonne coach Byron McPherson. “We’re a young and inexperienced team and most of our players were football players, so we didn’t have our full team until the middle of November.”

Terrebonne will look to continue their early district success on Friday when they host Lafourche Parish’s Tigers – Thibodaux – in what will be a rematch between arguably the two top teams in the district.

Terrebonne won the first district meeting of the season between the teams, 58-57, in Thibodaux on Jan. 5.

But McPherson said he knows it will be difficult to sweep their neighbor parish rivals.

“We know it’s going to be harder this time around,” McPherson said. “We’re going to have to come in and watch some film and make some minor adjustments from what we did the first time. But Thibodaux is playing good ball and we know this will be a harder game for us.”

Despite their success, McPherson’s Tigers have been less a ‘Tiger’ and more a ‘Cardiac Cat’ in the start of district play, as the team has regularly started slow in games, before fighting back to win close contests.

Terrebonne defeated South Lafourche on Jan. 8 thanks to a 3-point basket as time expired and in the first meeting with Thibodaux, Terrebonne rallied from a four-point deficit with less than 30 seconds to play in the game.

McPherson said his team needs to improve in the first halves of games as the playoffs near.

“That’s been the tale of the whole season with the starting off slow,” McPherson said. “We’ve looked at it and the guys see that when we do play well in that first quarter, we roll, so in warm-ups, we’re going harder to try to take it into the flow of the game.”

Thibodaux has been the opposite of their opponents and has rolled to double-digit wins in five-straight district games, following the loss to Terrebonne.

“We’ve been playing a little better lately,” Thibodaux coach Tony Clark said. “The biggest thing is we’re shooting better.”

One of the guys shooting in a rhythm as of late has been senior forward Shavon Coleman, who has dominated the Bayou District lately.

The 6-foot-6-inch standout scored 33 points in the team’s Jan. 15 win against Assumption.

The senior matched that performance and also poured in 33 points in the team’s 87-71 win against H.L. Bourgeois just four days later.

Rivals.com ranks Coleman the No. 97 prospect in the country for the 2010 signing class and he made a verbal commitment to the University of Louisiana-Monroe in December.

“He’s been great. He’s a great player,” Clark said. “It hasn’t just been him, everyone around him has stepped it up, to make it easier for him to stand out.”

Clark said his team will likely continue their current push if they are able to continuously play at a high level.

“We just need to be consistent,” he said. “I know what our guys are capable of doing and we’ve just got to make sure we keep doing that. If so, we will be fine.”

For Thibodaux to even the season series with their rival, Clark said his team will need to control Terrebonne’s shooters.

“We played pretty well for a little bit the first time,” he said. “But we have to control their shooters. They are big. They are good. And we’ve got to do better with them.”