Brookland-Cayce’s Marcus Kinley drives into Airport’s Forrest Arnold. Photo by Jeff Blake/ColumbiaWeddingPhotos.com The Airport boys’ basketball team held off Brookland Cayce for a gutsy 60-47 road win Friday, January 27 as Quan Bovain and Manny Polston led the Eagles with 14 points each.

“ We’ve been on a three-game losing streak, so it feels good to come out and play pretty good again,” Airport head coach Jimmy Kinard said. “It was the first time in a while that we played pretty good team ball, and we shared the ball for the most part.

“Manny Poston kind of carried us most of the year, but we had some other guys step up and contribute tonight.”

While all of Polston’s 14 points came in the first half, Raymond Pinkston scored eight of his 12 points in the second half as the Eagles fought off a pair of late rallies by the Bearcats.

Without guard Dominique Hollman available, the Bearcats struggled to get the ball inside most of the game. Hollman suffered a knee injury during practice and couldn’t go on Friday.

Airport’s Manny Polston is fouled by Brookland Cayce’s Terry Jones. Photo by Jeff Blake/ColumbiaWeddingPhotos.com “We knew they were a better team with him playing than without him,” said Kinard, “We knew (junior guard Terry Jones) was a pretty good perimeter shooter. And he knocked down some shots against us.”

Brookland-Cayce head coach Ricky Bouknight knew his game plan would have to be altered with Hollman in the lineup.

“Oh, it’s a huge difference,” he admitted. “He’s averaging 21 points the last three games, and then you have to put somebody in who hadn’t played a whole lot. So, just a tremendous, tremendous difference.”

The Bearcats hoped to survive on the long-range shooting of junior guard Terry Jones, and Bouknight looked to his sharpshooter to step up.

“That was by design tonight,” he said of his team’s game plan. “We’ve had trouble finishing, and we feel like Terry Jones can shoot it with the best of them, so we gave him a little bit more of a green light tonight.

“What we were hoping was it would give him a little more confidence, and it did because he hit some big buckets tonight. We got to rein him in sometimes, but tonight we felt like that might be what we needed to do to give us a chance.”

Kinard agreed.

“I think Hollman has scored most of his points in the paint, and I think Jones felt he had to take on more of a scoring role and try to hit some more perimeter shots,” he said.

The Eagles are playing for a playoff spot, and Kinard hopes they have the ability to fine-tune their game as the regular season winds down.

“We still have a lot of careless mistakes and poor decisions at times, but I got some young guards, too,” he said. “I mean, we’ve just got to let them play and learn from their mistakes and, hopefully, start reducing them.

“Maybe we stole one tonight, but a lot of things can still happen. It sounds like March Madness, but we could be out, and we could be in. Tonight did help but we probably need to get at least one more out of the last three (games remaining).”

Jones finished with 16 points to lead Brookland- Cayce.

As a team Airport went 17-of-21 from the free throw line compared to the Bearcats’ 5-of-11 performance.