It was early. It was often. It was varied. And it was relentless.
Use any description you want, but the Darlington Tigers’ first quarter against Pepperell on Tuesday was downright dominating.
Scoring the first 38 points of the game, the visiting Tigers rolled to an 89-29 win over Pepperell at the Fire Pit.
Surprisingly, it was actually only Darlington’s second-biggest win of the year. The Tigers beat Rockmart 114-42 back in December. Darlington — ranked No. 6 in the Class A-AAA private school division — is now 17-2 overall and 8-0 in Region 6-A games, with all but four of its wins coming by at least 20 points.
A 32-0 first-quarter blitz essentially put Tuesday’s game away before all the fans were even in their seats.
“Yeah, Darlington started both halves incredibly well tonight. They jumped on us from the very beginning. 38-0 out of the gate before we even scored … man, that’s quite a feat,” said Pepperell head coach Zach Thompson. “You never want to find yourself in that situation. And then, to start the second half, after we’d closed the first half with some momentum, their first four shots, they go 4-for-4, all 3-pointers … and it’s a 12-0 run in less than a minute. We found ourselves clawing from behind literally from the tip. All the credit to Darlington, they are a great team, and coach West has done a great job with them. We just found ourselves in basically a 40-point deficit tonight, and it was an uphill battle all game.”
“They benefit from having a lot of size on their team and that’s something we lack,” Thompson added. “We have to try to make up for that by boxing out with smaller guys. Sometimes that goes our way, but nights like tonight, they just out-muscled and out-played us. Their post players hurt us down low, and even their guards got a lot of rebounds tonight. I think in the first half, we threw up some short-armed quick shots, but once we settled down, we got some better looks. We’re incredibly young, and we’re still jelling as a team.”
Darlington head coach Nathan West said he tries to challenge his team before every game — no matter the opponent — to play up to the high standard that the Tigers have set for themselves.
“It’s just what we try to do on a nightly basis. We try to play our brand of basketball and play at a high level. I challenge our guys before every game to just use it as an opportunity to go get better,” West said. “I think we’ve got a good group of guys … our team camaraderie is really solid. Any time you have a good locker room, you see a lot of good things on the court. We always say that any time we play, we’re not competing against the other team, we’re competing against ourselves and the game of basketball. We never take any opponent lightly, we always just try to be who we are. Consistency is important.”
Darlington got a layup from DJ Hall on its first possession just 15 seconds into the game — and that was the closest the score would be for the rest of the night. The Tigers scored on a barrage of driving layups, 3-point jumpers, putbacks, and dunks, and when the smoke had cleared, Darlington had an unassailable 32-0 lead at the end of the quarter.
The Tigers then got back-to-back 3-point bombs from Jordan Wilkerson in the second period to open up a 38-0 lead before the Dragons finally got on the board on a baseline jumper by Charlie Branton two minutes into the quarter.
By halftime, Pepperell had found a little footing but still trailed 48-13. When the third quarter started, Darlington again used an air-raid of offense to go on a 12-0 run, with Wilkerson, Hall, Christian Teasley and Cam Selig all connecting from long range to push the lead to 60-13.
A 10-2 run to close the third made the score 76-19, and then a 9-3 run to close the game gave the Tigers the 60-point margin of victory.
Thirteen of the 14 Darlington players who entered the game got into the scoring column, led by Hall and Joseph Ogunyemi, who had 14 points each. Teasley and Wilkerson finished with 12 points apiece.
Pepperell’s leading scorer was Aaron Wood, who finished with nine points.
Pepperell will host Model on Friday, while Darlington is back in action on Saturday, hosting Christian Heritage.
This article was originally published in the Rome-News Tribune on Jan. 30, 2026.
