McEachern gets lift from sophomore Chase Lumpkin, defeats Pace Academy 64-59

McEachern Indians' Christian Curl #3 avoids double team by Pace Academy Knights' Jackson Ferry #4 and Jaydon Avery #11

The McEachern Indians boys basketball team knew coming into this season, all eyes would be on them. After all, the number one recruit out of the class of 2024, Ace Bailey, helped lead them to the Georgia High School Association Class 6A state championship game, in which they would eventually fall to Grayson.

However, coming into Saturday night's contest with Pace Academy, the Indians find themselves ranked the No. 4 team in Georgia and a top 100 team nationally and after their 64-59 win on Saturday, McEachern now sits at 15-3 overall and 8-0 in region play.

"That's the great thing about this team today, every night you never know who's going to step up," McEachern head coach, Tremayne Anchrum said after Saturday's win, noting last season there was almost always and expectation for Bailey to lead the team each night, however this season, the Indians are having various players step up night to night.

"So tonight Chase Lumpkin had it going, Jayden Bynes got it going in the second quarter, put it together and befor you know it Christian Curl set the pace, it was a good game all around," Anchrum said of his team's performance after they found themselves down 9-2 early in the first quarter but would out score Pace 23-10 in the second quarter to take a 34-24 lead into the locker room at halftime.

In the the third quarter, with Lumpkin scoring seven of his 24 points on the night, the Indians would just outscore Pace 18-16, however would lead 52-40 heading into the final period of play, eventually picking up their fifth straight win and Anchrum attributes their success to "just understanding" who they are as a team.

"When you lose such a big part of your team and you come into a new season, early on people are trying to figure out roles. What do they do, what don't they do, how do we make up for what we loss," Anchrum said of what his players dealt with early on but as the season has progressed, the Indians have been "figuring out who we are,".