The hot 3-point shooting of Colston Thompson picked up Hartselle’s Tigers and enabled them to score an impressive 62-51 win over Lawrence County’s Red Devils on the road Friday night.

The Tigers were up by one point, 23-22, at halftime and pulled away in the final quarter.

Thompson canned six of eight shots from outside the arc and finished the game with 18 points.

“We showed better balance on offense from our first game,’ said head coach Keith Wright, “with five different players scoring nine or more points. “That’s something we expect to continue as the season progresses.”

“We’re playing catch up now since five of our kids played football through the quarter finals and we held up the start of our season,” he added. “It’s going to take a couple of weeks for them to get conditioned to basketball.”

Preston Adams scored 10 points and Deacon Aldridge, Thomas Fleischman and Timbo Slaton each had nine points.

Fleischman pulled down a team-high 13 rebounds while Slaton had nine boards.

Decatur 48, Hartselle 45

The Tigers experienced difficulty executing on offense in their season-opening game at Decatur High School on Nov. 27 and came up on the short end against the Red Raiders, 45-48.

The Red Raiders were ahead 27-19 at halftime but the Tigers fought back in the third and fourth quarters and were within reach of getting a win. “We didn’t execute well the last couple of minutes,” said Wright. “But our kids fought back after being down and played their guts out.”

Slaton paced the Tigers in scoring with 17 points. Na’Vante Williams had 11 points for Decatur.