HICKORY — Undefeated North Rowan just keeps rolling along against league rivals. Now the Cavaliers will finally get to see a new opponent.
Coach Kelly Everhart’s powerhouse made it 25 in a row by trouncing Central Carolina Conference rival Ledford 63-34 in the 2A West Sectional No. 4 semifinals Wednesday at Catawba Valley Community College. It was North’s 15th win against a CCC foe.
Next up is Avery County (18-9), the Western Highlands Conference’s No. 2 seed, at 3:30 p.m. here Saturday. Avery crushed Surry Central in the second half for an 82-61 victory earlier Wednesday.
“I was real impressed with Avery whenever I saw them out here,” said Everhart, who saw some of the Vikings’ win before going to the locker room with his team.
“They’ve got some kids that are really strong in the post, and then they’ve got one or two kids that can really knock down the 3-pointer. We are going to have to come prepared,” said Everhart.
North had defeated fourth-place Ledford by scores of 71-51 and 58-51 during the CCC regular season, then by 67-53 in the semifinals of the league tourney last week, but the Cavaliers got a different look from the Panthers this time when Ledford came out holding the ball.
Coach Gil Maxwell of the Panthers explained that point guard Stan Smith was not available because of an injury in Monday night’s 44-42 win at Lincolnton, forcing him to slow it down.
“It really didn’t surprise me,” said Everhart. “I was hoping that it would be more of an up-tempo game. Gil actually told me before the game his player had got hurt against Lincolnton.”
Ledford held the ball for almost a minute on every possession except when losing it to steals by Chris Phillips, Marcus Reddick, Graham Hosch or Omar Witherspoon. The Panthers took only four shots in the first quarter and trailed 10-4 after that period.
“I was just extremely thrilled with the way that we handled ourselves on defense. I thought that we kept working and kept working, and we just kept getting our hands on balls. I thought they got kind of lazy with their passes sometimes, but whenever you’re playing a slowdown game like that, of course it’s easy to do,” said the North coach.
The Cavaliers led 24-11 at halftime, then broke it open by outscoring the Panthers 23-7 in the third quarter. That was also the quarter during which North’s Bryan McCullough hit the 1,000-point mark for his career.
McCullough finished with exactly the 21 points he needed for 1,000. Senior teammate Marcus Reddick was also in double figures with 10.
However, a player who scored only four points, senior point guard Chris Phillips, put a spark in the Cavaliers in that big third quarter.
Phillips had to leave the contest with about five minutes to play when he was elbowed in the mouth while guarding Ledford’s Jared Hall in the open court with a referee in close proximity. No foul was called.
“The fact that the referee was standing right there, and it was so flagrant: Not only could you see it, you could also hear it. I don’t know what his reason or excuse was. He said he didn’t see it.I don’t know how you could not see that,” said Everhart. The play occurred right in front of the North bench.
“I was very proud of Chris Phillips. Chris Phillips could have very easily come up swinging after that, but Chris kept his head and kept his composure,” said Everhart. “He didn’t say anything, just turned around and walked away. He busted his lip pretty bad. Whenever he came in here (locker room), he ended up having to cut off a piece of skin.”
“I guess when you get in this type of playoff atmosphere, everybody does what they’ve got to do,” said Phillips, pointing out that he had had no problems with Hall in their previous games.
North led 18-4 when Phillips went out of the game.
“It was fairly obvious, even at that point, that it was probably going to be a lopsided ballgame, and the game could have very easily gotten out of control. That’s one thing I cautioned our players about at halftime, just making sure we didn’t do anything foolish, because we didn’t want to get anybody ejected,” said the North coach.
Phillips came back at the start of the second half and had five steals, four assists, two rebounds and a basket in North’s strong third quarter.
“I think that he was so focused after that he was determined he was going to make some good things happen for us,” said Everhart.
Phillips finished with eight steals, nine assists and five rebounds.
“I just tried to keep my teammates involved,” said Phillips. “Just because an incident like this happens, doesn’t mean you’ve got to put your head down. You’ve got to keep on playing.”
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NOTES: North went 25-for-52 (48.1 percent) on field goals and 12-for-15 at the foul line, while the Panthers were 13-for-35 (37.1 percent) from the floor and 7-for-15 on free throws. ... McCullough, Phillips and reserve James House each had five rebounds as North beat the Panthers 33-20 on the boards. ... Ledford has 25 turnovers to North’s 18. ... Sam Cecil and Hall led Ledford’s scoring with 14 and 10 points, respectively.
LEDFORD (34) — Adams , Hall 10, Sensing, Cecil 14, Coleman, Bivins, W. Smith 5, Myers, Johnson 3, Dawson, Massey 2.
NORTH ROWAN (63) — McCullough 21, Hosch 4, Lawing 6, Phillips 4, Reddick 10, Davis 4, Witherspoon 6, House 2, Bates, Farmer 2, Peoples 4.
Ledford 4 7 7 16 — 34
N. Rowan 10 14 23 16 — 63
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