Discipline comes with the territory. Over the course of a long season full of countless practices and tiresome drills, coaches will be forced to call a player on something he or she did and punish the player for that misdeed.

Sometimes the player sulks, gets angry, causes more disruptions. Other times, the player works twice as hard as before to prove that he’s ready to move on.

Luckily for West Rowan head coach Mike Gurley, Brandon White falls into the latter of those two groups. The 6-foot-8 senior center missed the East Rowan and Northwest Cabarrus games due to a team rules violation, but bounced back against Kannapolis on Friday night with five points and six rebounds. Gurley was more impressed with White’s prowess around the basket as he was White’s eager, attacking attitude whenever a loose ball strayed his way.

“Brandon White was a big lift. He was suspended for the last two games for team discipline, but he kept his head up and came out and practiced hard,”Gurley said. “He really wreaked some havoc in their with that big body of his.”

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THESCOOPONSLOOP: The West Rowan girls team has found a great boost off the bench in junior Jenny Sloop.

Sloop scored in double figures for the third time this season, knocking home 12 points Friday night against Kannapolis in the Falcons’ 53-34 win. But as pleased as head coach Angie Waddell was with the points, Sloop’s defense impressed her even more.

“She’s turned it on here lately,”Waddell said. “She does the dirty work, she’s one of the players who doesn’t worry about her points.”

Sloop owned the low post in the second quarter. Her defense on Wonder forwards Michelle Crosby and Holly Morgan accounted for four turnovers and stood as one of the reasons Kannapolis scored only three points in the eight-minute period. Every time an entry pass headed for the post, Sloop scooted around the intended receiver and picked it off.

Waddell rewarded Sloop’s efforts with a second-half start. In addition to the 12 points, Sloop added eight rebounds and five steals on the night.

You probably could have figured out that West guard Kari Schenk has the longest current streak of double-figure scoring games in the county (16), but could you have guessed who has the No. 2 streak?

Time’s up.

Surprise. It’s East junior Emily Rich, who has cracked double digits six straight times. Likely guesses Nicole Loggins, Megan Honeycutt and Sherree Gillespie have all had lengthy streaks snapped this season.

For the boys, West’s Scooter Sherrill has run off a string of a whopping 80 straight games in double figures. Next in the county is South’s Damien Argrett with eight. North’sDre Byrd and West’s Donte Minter are working on modest six-game streaks.

Argrett has picked up a lot of deserved attention for his meteoric rise from nowhere to status as one of the county’s elite players over the last two months, but one of the prime reasons for Argrett’s emergence has gone unnoticed.

That would be Jonathan Faggart, South’s 6-6 senior post man. Faggart is the unsung guy who pushes Argrett to improve his game in practice every day.

As he came through the ranks at South, Faggart was the main man and top scorer on ninth-grade and jayvee teams, and once — with good reason — looked forward to his day as a varsity star.

However, with the emergence of Argrett, Faggart has become a part-time player in his final campaign (his biggest scoring game was eight points against North Rowan). Still, South coach John Davis will quickly tell you that there is no better team guy around. Faggart’s not jealous of Argrett’s instant success. Instead, he’s taken pride in becoming a part of it.

The best evidence of Faggart’s team-first attitude came on Thursday night when South upset Davie County.

Faggart didn’t play at all for the first time this year, but no one was any more excited about the unexpected victory than he was. He led the cheers for his teammates, before, during and after the game.

Coaches around the county and the country just wish they could find more kids like him.

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BRIGHTFUTURE: The play of the South boys on Thursday and Friday (a two-point loss to Mount Tabor) clearly shows they haven’t written this year off, but the Raiders’ strong junior class already has some fans looking forward to the good things that lie ahead.

Three juniors — Doug Daugherty (10 double-figure games), Tore’ Girty (eight double-figure games) and Scott Beck (six double-figure games) have emerged as capable scorers.

Add to that group, rebounders Tim Cook and Maurice Torrence, and ball-handler Nathan Kennedy and South has a heck of a nucleus for next season.

Now, all Davis needs is for another one of his players to grow eight inches like Argrett did last year.

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BOUNCINGBACK: A few eyebrows were raised after all-county candidate Brittney Gaddy didn’t score when the South girls were thrashed by Davie on Thursday.

But Gaddy was back to her old self on Friday, racking up 19 points in a loss to Mount Tabor.

Gaddy, a 6-1 sophomore, has scored 19 or more points eight times this season, more than anyone else in the county. North Rowan’s Megan Honeycutt and Salisbury’s Sherree Gillespie have reached the “nifty 19” mark seven times apiece.

Doug Wilson is building his young Wonder team around youth and speed, and at the heart of the girls hoops revival is sophomore Elise Stanback.

The point guard doesn’t stand tall at 5-foot-5, but what she lacks in height she more than makes up for with speed. It doesn’t stop with her feet, either. She has a quick release from the 3-point line that baffles all but the best zone defenses.

“She’s a great little guard,”West Rowan head coach Angie Waddell said of Stanback. “For her size, she can shoot over you. She’s got that little extra oomph where she can get it over you.”

Stanback’s team dropped a 53-34 decision to West on Friday night, but she almost brought her team back from a 17-point halftime deficit. Stanback dropped a quick 3, raced into the lane and scored two more, then faked a drive to pull up for a jumper. Her personal 7-0 run had the Wonders within nine points, and Kannapolis would pull as close as five before fading down the stretch.

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PERKINGUP: Wilson had Amy Privette Perko speak to his team about hoop dreams on Friday.

Perko was likely the best girls player in Wonder history during her brilliant run in the 1980s, then went on to star at Wake Forest. She’s now the associate athletics director at Kansas University.

Acting runs in the family of Davie big man Jon Orsillo, whose father recently starred in an area production of “Of Mice and Men.”

But Orsillo’s fellow big man, Larry Umberger, is the War Eagle who wins the Oscars on the basketball court. Umberger has become a master of accepting charges, an unusual avocation that requires both a willingness to sacrifice one’s body and talent as a thespian.

Umberger was 1-for-2 with his flopping/flipping/flapping theatrics on Friday in Davie’s big win over R.J. Reynolds. He drew one big charging call, but was whistled for a foul himself on his other back-first trip to the floor. A call, by the way, that enraged Davie coach Jim Young.

Umberger cheerfully admits to being a Duke fan, so he no doubt has the ultimate charge-drawer, Shane Battier, as his role model.

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NOREST: There may be no league in the state quite like the 4A Central Piedmont Conference.

Four of the five boys teams have winning records, while three of the squads — Davie, West Forsyth and R.J. Reynolds — have combined for a phenomenal 46 wins against just eight losses.

Making things tougher, South’s surge means the league doesn’t have anything that passes for a weak team. No one knows that better than Young, whose reward for smacking Reynolds on Friday is back-to-back games with first-place West Forsyth this week.