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LANDIS — The North Rowan girls basketball team won Friday night, and that’s just about all that could be said for it.
A weary group playing its third game in three nights plodded through the motions in the South Rowan gym and kept its perfect season going with a 58-42 victory. The win followed an emotional overtime game against West Rowan on Thursday and another county win over East on Wednesday.
“That’s what you call a back-to-back-to-back,” Cav girls head coach Gary Atwell said. “Shoot! NBA teams don’t even play three games in a row!”
There’s a reason for that. A frustrated Atwell yelled at his team to run the offense the entire first half and actually subbed in four new players on two occasions to try to ignite a spark.
Nothing seemed to work, although the defense and a subpar effort that disappointed Raider head coach James Greene still led the Cavs to the 6-0 mark.
“We knew North was playing its third straight game,” Greene said. “We tried to step up the tempo, we just weren’t ready to play. This was the first game all season where we haven’t played hard. We were slow.”
The same-ol’ Cavs started fine, getting an inside score from Courtney Hill and a 3-pointer from Joyce Hipps for a 5-0 lead.
The Raiders (2-8) missed their first six shots from the field and didn’t score until Britt Miller’s free throw at the 3:33 mark. It was 9-3 after the first quarter, as the two squads combined to shoot 5-for-25 (20 percent) from the field and turn the ball over 12 times.
The North lead jumped as high as 10 points on Ashley Bowie’s jumper. But the Cavalier offense went stagnant again, committing seven more turnovers in the second quarter.
South hit 6-foot-1 center Brittney Gaddy in the post for an easy layup, Angela Efird converted a steal into two points and Katie Willett followed with a 3-pointer to pull South within 16-14.
Hipps rescued the Cavs, though, hitting consecutive 3s in the last two minutes of the first half.
The first half flew by so quickly, with so few interruptions from the three officials on the floor, that one fan jokingly asked at halftime if the little ball in their whistles had broken and silenced them.
The answer was a resounding no.
In an astonishingly foul-plagued second half, the North girls attempted 23 field goals. In the fourth quarter alone, the Cavs shot 22 free throws — it was 35 for the half.
The Raiders got into the action, too. After going just 3-for-6 from the line in the first half, they finished 13-for-25.
The difference in the game was that, in the third quarter, North made its free throws. The Cavs were 9-for-13 in that quarter, getting four straight from Courtney Hill and two each from Amber Hill and Moriah Jones.
The Cavs found themselves in the double-bonus as the fourth quarter opened with them leading 37-31.
“They were a team that was scrambling, on that bubble where they were almost in it,” Atwell said. “They wanted the ball back and they were playing physical.”
North made just enough of its free throws in the fourth quarter — 9-of-22 — to keep the lead around 10 points. Gaddy finished with nine of her 15 points in the second half, but never got on a roll because the Cav defense didn’t allow many entry passes.
“The guards were dropping down to front, and you hope it doesn’t get over-loaded too much and they get a 3 on the opposite side,” Atwell said. “We do a good job as small as we are.”
From Greene’s point of view, though, the Raiders could have gotten the ball down low and done everything else they were supposed to, had they played with more intensity.
“North wanted it more as a team. They were more assertive,” Greene said. “We did all the things that we talked about not doing in the pre-game.”
NORTH ROWAN (58) — C.Hill 14, A.Hill 12, Hipps 11, Bowie 8, Jones 5, Craige 4, Hendrick 2, Witherspoon 2, Suber, Peterson.
SOUTH ROWAN (42)— Gaddy 15, Efird 6, Brown 6, Willett 5, Yost 5, Khan 2, Littlejohn 2, Miller 1, Blackwood, Raper, Culbertson, Neely.
North Rowan 9 15 13 21 — 58
South Rowan 3 13 15 11 — 42
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