Prep Basketball: West Montgomery girls 38, North Rowan 33

By David Shaw

dshaw@salisburypost.com

SPENCER — The music has all but stopped for the reeling North Rowan girls basketball team.

Its season may have hit a low-water mark on Saturday, when visiting West Montgomery — winless in its first 13 games — pinned a 38-33 loss on the Cavs.

"It was because they don't have No. 20," said winning coach Eugene Godoy. "She's a strong player and without her, they're not the same team."

That would be senior guard Symphony Roberts, North's leading scorer, who suffered a season-ending dislocated ankle injury on Thursday and will wear a hard cast the next six weeks.

"She's done. That's the reality we're facing," coach Tony Hillian said after North (6-13, 6-7 YVC) suffered its sixth consecutive loss. "But this was not pretty. I don't know where the Lady Cavaliers that I started the season with are right now. I know the snow days hurt us, being off six or seven days. But losing Symphony did us in."

Minus Roberts, who scored 18 points when the teams first met on Dec. 21, the Cavs resembled Earth & Wind without Fire. They fell behind 5-0 in the opening minutes and didn't score until freshman Taylor Sells buried a 3-pointer midway through the first quarter. They managed only two field goals in the first half and went to their locker room trailing 16-7.

"We came into the game thinking, 'Hey, they haven't beaten anybody,'" senior Cree Turner said. "Maybe we weren't ready to play. With Symphony getting injured, it's hard to get up. But we know we play as a team, win as a team and lose as a team. One player can't win the ballgame."

North's most electric player was Teaunna Cuthbertson, the sophomore who sparked a third-period comeback and finished with 11 points. When she took an inbounds pass from Turner and made a layup with 2:56 left in the quarter, the Cavs finally pulled even 21-21. Then midway through the fourth period, she hit a short jumper in the lane that made it 28-28. North took its first and only lead of the game when Sells drained a 3-ball from the left side 20 seconds later.

"That was all teamwork," Cuthbertson said. "But I was trying to be a leader out there. No one else was going to take over."

West (1-13, 1-11) used a 10-3 finishing kick to sink the Cavs, who seriously need to find a fix before it seriously gets too late.

"It has to be a team effort," Hillian said. "Everybody, including me, has to do their part." west montgomery (38) — Cuthrell 11, Turner 10, Drake 9, Nicholson 4, Carpenter 4. north rowan (33) — Cuthbertson 11, Sells 7, C.Turner 6, Vann 4, Bagley 2, Berry 2, Brown 1, Bush, Davis, E.Turner.W. Mont. 9 7 7 15 — 38

N. Rowan 4 3 15 11 — 33