Coach Thad Burgess' Dawson County varsity boys basketball team had two long road trips last week.
The Tigers went to Blue Ridge on Jan. 31 and came away with a 38-23 win over the Rebels.
On Feb. 3, the team fought tooth and nail at Rabun County, but lost 56-53 in overtime.
Dawson County fell behind early at Fannin last week.
The Tigers trailed 8-0 before righting the ship. Dawson outscored the Rebels 38-15 the rest of the game.
"We controlled the boards and did a nice job defensively to take control of the game. Tyler [Dominy] had a nice game offensively after battling the flu last week," Burgess said.
The Tigers defense allowed Fannin only single digit scoring in each quarter.
Dominy led the team in scoring with 15 points.
Will Patterson scored a team-high 12 points for the Rebels.
Tigers scorers: Dominy-15 points, Will Anglin-6 points, Gunnar Armstrong-5 points, Jonathan Sanderson-4 points and Camron Chester-3 points.
Three Tigers players scored in double figures against Rabun on Friday night in Tiger.
Unfortunately, it wasn't enough as the Wildcats prevailed in overtime to take the 56-53 win.
Both teams were evenly matched in the slugfest in front of a huge crowd.
Dawson raced out to a 24-16 halftime lead. The Tigers held a 6-point lead after three quarters, 32-26, just to see it evaporate in the final quarter. Rabun outscored the Tigers 18-12 in the final 8 minutes to send the game into overtime.
Anglin and Dominy scored 19 points each for Dawson County. Bruce Clark also had a big game offensively. He contributed 10 points.
Rabun County was led in scoring by Dillon Bleckely with 19 points, Tanner Plemmons with 16 points and Chan Patterson contributed 15 points.
"It was a great atmosphere at Rabun," Burgess said. "I thought our guys played their hearts out and left everything on the floor for four quarters and an overtime. I was very pleased at how we played against a very good team. Will Anglin did a tremendous job defensively on Plemmons and held him to just four field goals and Will had his career game with 19 points."
Burgess said while the two teams seem to match up fairly evenly, Rabun's experience may be the difference.
"We are very even as we lost at the buzzer at our place a month ago, and had a chance to win again at their place in regulation and overtime. Same records and evenly matched, the slight difference in our two teams is they play five seniors and we have none in our lineup, their experience seemed to make the small difference at the end as we led throughout the game but just could not put the game away," he said.
Rabun is currently 18-5 overall and 6-2 in the region.
Tigers scorers: Anglin-19 points, Dominy-19 points, Clark-10 points, Sanderson-2 points and Armstrong-3 points.
The Tigers are currently 17-6 overall with two Region 8A-AA games remaining against Union and Banks counties.
Both games are at home and will affect the Tigers' seeding in the region tournament.
Dawson has a 4-4 record in region play.
Today's game will start at 7:30 p.m., while Friday night's game will tip-off at 8:30 p.m.
"I really like where our team is. Focused and playing with great intensity at the end of the year," Burgess said. "Hopefully being at home for the last two games will give us a little extra energy in these two important games."