LEXINGTON— Every clank off the rim Friday night seemed to serve as an exclamation point.
North Rowan’s boys basketball team headed to Lexington with upset hopes, and trailed just 37-31 at halftime.
Then came the disastrous third and fourth quarters. The Cavaliers managed just eight points over the final 16 minutes of a 59-39 defeat to the Central Carolina Conference front-runner.
North didn’t turn the ball over much. In fact, the Cavs took 37 shots in the second half. But they made just three of them —that’s 8 percent shooting.
“We got down and felt the need to be putting up 3-point shots,”North head coach Kelly Everhart said. “We had good looks, our fundamentals looked good, the concentration was there — they just didn’t find the hoop.
“Against Lexington, you’re not going to get many second chances, so you’d better make your first one count.”
As the close game dragged on into a blowout, the Cavs came face to face with the new order of things in the CCC:For the first time in three years, it’s Lexington and everybody else, not North and everybody else.
The Yellow Jackets handed North its first league loss of the season and stood 7-0 after playing everybody once. Everhart had hoped the combination of Lexington’s solid record (14-4 overall) and North’s suspect one (5-13, 2-6) would catch the Jackets napping.
“I thought this was maybe an opportunity to steal one, and if we beat Lexington then we’d have a slight advantage over some other teams,”Everhart said. “It just didn’t work out that way.”
Both teams shot the ball well in the first half. The Cavs got 14 points from Geter and shot 52 percent from the field to start.
Lexington got big contributions from big man Cory Holt (15 first-half points) and Ulyses Ashe (nine). The Jackets shot 63 percent in the half, but would’ve trailed at the break had North not gone 6-for-18 from the free-throw line.
After halftime, North couldn’t hit from anywhere. The Cavs didn’t score in the third quarter until 2:51 remained and Lexington stretched the margin to 44-35 entering the fourth.
The Jackets pulled away with a fast-break layup from Ashe and a Michael Hogan dunk early in the period. The Cavs got as close as 48-37 on Geter’s final hoop, but Lexington drained enough free throws in the final minutes to seal the win.
“The shots weren’t falling for us and they scored off all our miscues,”said Geter, who finished with 18 points. “We weren’t getting back on defense and they were getting layups.”
Holt finished with 24 points and 10 rebounds, while Ashe tallied 16 and 11, respectively. The Jackets did miss 19 free throws, but they shot 52 percent from the field and outrebounded North 39-22.
“I really thought we played extremely hard. We held our own,”Everhart said. “They’re awfully athletic, crashing the boards …
“I knew they were bigger than we are, but I believe those guys grew a couple inches since we’d seen them a month ago.”
For his part, Lexington coach Don Corry hopes to see North again.
“I wish ’em luck. I’d like to see them make the playoffs,”Corry said. “If they play the other teams in the league the way they did us, they’ll beat them.”
NORTH ROWAN (39) — Geter 18, Pemberton 2, Rankin 3, Connor 3, Bates 6, Hawkins 2, House 5, Mitchell, Horton, Rutherford.
LEXINGTON (59) — Hogan 10, White 2, McCown 6, Ashe 16, Hardman 1, Holt 24, Mabe.
North Rowan 16 15 4 4 — 39
Lexington 18 19 7 15 — 59
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