Prep Basketball: Salisbury boys 45, Thomasville 40

By Jordan Honeycutt

sports@salisburypost.com

THOMASVILLE — The Thomasville Bulldogs came into Tuesday night attempting to sweep the season series –– but Salisbury would have “Nunn” of it.

Hornet big man Tony Nunn established his presence inside, scoring 18 points in a 45-40 victory.

“I think that I had their defense frustrated with my size and strength,” Nunn said.

“My teammates just continued to work and get the ball into me and I just continued to work hard also.”

Salisbury used patience and swift perimeter passes to work the all around the court and to set up lofty entrance passes to Nunn.

One might think that with Thomasville’s lack of size that Nunn getting touches inside would be coach Jason Causby’s main concern –– but it wasn’t.

That was stopping Thomasville guard Quanny Johnson.

“I thought that our guards, mainly Kalil (Duncan) and John (Canipe) did a fantastic job on Quanny,” Causby said.

“He (Johnson) scored 17 on us last time when they beat us and we tried to limit him and make someone else beat us and I though we did a great job collectively.”

Johnson only scored eight points, as the Bulldogs only had one player in double figures.

In addition to the inside play of Nunn, Salisbury’s Tion McCain also provided an outside force with 13 points.

McCain was his normal steady self hitting key threes and taking care of the basketball for the Hornets down the stretch.

“We were hoping to be able to count on Tion a lot tonight and he was big for us,” Causby said.

“He was absolutely instrumental in the second half in preserving the win for us.”

The game hung in the balance the entire fourth quarter as Salisbury salted it away with ball control and a little help from horrific shooting by the Bulldogs.

Thomasville had the ball, down three with 35 seconds remaining.

Upon inbounding the ball, they got three wide open looks at a triple off of a miss and two offensive rebounds but still came up empty.

“Our shots just could not go down tonight,” Thomasville coach Tony Clark said.

“We thought that by them taking Quanny away, that it would play right into our hands and other guys would have big nights, but it just didn’t work that way.”

The Hornets were able to hold Thomasville to an anemic five points in both the second and fourth quarters.

“We did have great scoring defense tonight but we had our own lapses and bad shot selection at times but luckily we were able to overcome that and tough this one out,” Causby said.

SALISBURY (45) — Nunn 18, McCain 13, Robertson 4, Adams 3, Duncan 3, Griffin 2, J.M. Petty 2, Canipe, Edwards, Woods.

THOMASVILLE (40) — Skeen 12, Q.Johnson 8, Ray 6, M.Johnson 3, Payne 3, Marsh 2, Purvis 2, Watkins 2, Wilson 2, Ingram, Jones.

Salisbury 14 06 13 12 — 45

Thom. 14 05 16 05 — 40