Blue Devils beat Little Rock Mills in return to Devil Dome

West Memphis wins in home debut for Coach Clay

WM School District It's been 13 years since a high school basketball game has been played at the Devil Dome, but on Thursday night the old girl was never more alive.

With Lehr Arena under repair for a new floor, the Blue Devil boys basketball team made a change in venue to a spruced-up Devil Dome, complete with a new floor, new bleachers, new lobby, new locker rooms and a new HVAC system that cooled a joint that was known in the 1980s and '90s as 'the Hot Box.'

Well, somewhat.

The frantic fourth quarter provided a lot of body heat from the sizable crowd that drank in Blue Devil tradition.

At any rate, the Blue Devils didn't forget how to perform in their old digs.

Senior Kam Barnes sank a layup with 8 seconds remaining in the game to lift the West Memphis boys to a 62-60 victory over Little Rock Mills before a wild, feverish crowd.

'Wooo, that was fun!' exclaimed new Blue Devil head coach Irving Clay. 'I wish we could play every game in this place.'

Clay, a state championship coach who won big at Turrell and Marion, is considered an honorary Devil Dome alum, as he watched two of his children play on some storied West Memphis teams in the 1990s.

The atmosphere in the Devil Dome was never wilder.

With Blue Devil alum Sonny Weems, who played on a state championship team in the same facility before moving on to fame and fortune in the professional ranks, on hand the Blue Devils made the key plays in the fourth quarter and they were willed down the stretch by their own fans.

'The fans helped us win this game tonight,' said Clay. 'It wasn't full because there were very few sitting in the end zone student section, but both bleachers on the side were full and they were loud all night.'

With four starters gone from last year's team that went 12-12 and made it to the Class 6A state tournament and their coach, Marcus Brown, now at Murray State University as an assistant coach, the Blue Devils didn't blink.

They watched Mills 6-foot-4 guard Javion Guy-King, who has offers on the table from Arkansas, Ole Miss and Oklahoma State among others, do his best Corliss Williams impersonation.

In the 1991-92 season opener at the Devil Dome, Williamson scored 35 of his team's 50 points in a 50-49 Russellville win.

On Thursday night, King scored 19 of his team's 29 first-half points and he ended up with 32 to lead all scorers.

Many of King's points came with multiple Blue Devil defenders draped all over him, and at one point it seemed he could not miss.

But, after Barnes hit the go-ahead basket with 8 seconds left and after a Mills timeout with 3.7 seconds to play, everyone in the building knew who was going to take the last shot for the Comets.

'I was planning for them to lob the ball in the post to (King),' said Clay.

But it never materialized.

With two Blue Devils trailing him, King let fly an off-balanced 3-point attempt that never made it to the goal and the buzzer set off a wild West Memphis celebration at mid-court.

'Our kids never gave up,' said Clay, in reference to an 11-point West Memphis deficit in the second half.

'We made up for it with the hustle. We're still learning each other with a new system and new coach, but it's going to be a process. I loved the effort tonight, though.'

History was revised Thursday night.

In February of 2008, Blue Devil sophomore guard Jonathan Fitzgerald sent the old gym out with a bang when he hit what was thought to be the final shot at the Devil Dome, a half-

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Photo by Billy Woods BLUE DEVILS (cont.)

court 3-pointer at the buzzer.

But West Memphis junior guard Max Reece erased that distinction when he buried a 3-pointer 57 seconds

game.

With 1:37 to play in the third quarter, Mills took a 44-33 lead, but a Reece trey, his third of the game, with 1:58 to play in the fourth quarter gave the hosts a 58-53 lead and momentum that the Blue Devils fed off of until the very end.

A Trey Long triple with 21 seconds to play brought Mills into a 60-60 tie.

But after a wild scramble near the basket, Barnes wriggled free for a gamewinning layup.

Barnes paced the Blue Devil offense with 25 points while Dequarious Birdo hit 17, 15 of which came in the second half.

Reece scored 9 and Demetrius Barrett pumped in 5.