LIVINGSTON-Revenge is sweet, and no one knows it better than the Class 4A Area 8 Tournament Champion Demopolis High Tigers who fought back from a nine point fourth period deficit Saturday night to drop in a last second six-foot jumper for the 52-51 win over the reigning Class 4A defending state champion Livingston High Cougars.

With a nine-point lead and only seven minutes to play in Saturday night’s 4A Area Tournament, the Cougars were set to receive another 4A Area Tournament trophy, but seven minutes proved to be too long of a time to hold off the quick and powerful Tigers.

“This was a very hard loss for us tonight,” Cougars head coach Kenneth Threadgill said. “We were up by nine points, the game was ours and we gave it away. But Demopolis has got a very good team this year and I think their overall team speed was the deciding factor tonight.”

The Tigers know exactly what that feels like. In their first two meetings with the Cougars the Tigers dominated the first three periods of play leading by as much as five or more points headed into the last few minutes of the game only to fall in the end.

But Saturday night the tides shifted and it was DHS that rose up in the final quarter to get the win, which comes as a relief for head coach Jesse Bell.

“We believed that we could beat Livingston,” Bell said. “We had them beat twice before, but gave it up in the end. Saturday night we fought with everything we had, never giving up and we finally found a way to win.”

The Tigers found that win Saturday night with only seven seconds remaining on the clock as guard G. W. Washington bounced to his left using his quick speed to move past Cougars’ defender Cory Speight.

“They played right into our plan. We wanted to get isolation with G. W. against Speight,” Bell said. “We knew Speight couldn’t guard G. W. He’s to quick. Plus we knew Speight is not so good from his left and G.W. handles the ball better with his left, so it was a perfect match-up.”

Washington sped towards the basket leaving Speight behind and pulled up six feet out and banked the jumper off the glass for the 52-51win. “It was sweet to see that ball fall through the net,” Bell said.

Leading the way for the Tigers was Lequintin Lomax with 17 points (7 rebounds) and Dontrell Miller 17 points (4 rebounds). The Tigers shot 16-of-32 (50 percent) from the field while hitting 12-of-19 (64 percent) from the line.

Speight once again dominated the game as he led the Cougars with 26 points on the night with nine of his total 26 coming from behind the arch. But the difference Saturday night came in the third period when Speight was held to just one point while the Cougars as a team could only muster 3-total points.

With the win the Tigers gain home court advantage for their sub-regional match-up with Bibb County next Friday night, while the Cougars will have to travel to Dallas County to take on the Hornets.