West Rowan’s Sherrill waited until the end of the third quarter to score his 2,000th career point and a scrappy South boys team gave the Falcons all they could handle in a packed West gym. With history brushed aside, the Falcons (10-0) finally pulled away for a 77-63 win.

Everybody in the bleachers showed up to see Sherrill drive to the hoop and pull up inside the free-throw line for two at the third-quarter buzzer. That score gave Sherrill 15 for the night and 2,000 for his career, the first Rowan County male player to do so. Most important, however, was that the score gave West a 56-47 lead.

South (2-7) trailed by eight at halftime and came out unfazed. The Raiders drilled five 3-pointers — two each from Doug Daugherty and Scott Beck — in the third quarter and rallied from as far down as 14 points to as close as six.

Instead of sitting back and waiting for history to happen, West head coach Mike Gurley again had to watch as his team struggled to put the finishing touches on a win.

“We’re getting to a point in games where we need to bring the hatchet out and finish the game off. We’ve done that now in three or four games this year,” Gurley said. “It seems like it’s 14, 15 points and we ought to pull this thing away, and what happens is we continue to let the other team pull us back. South did a great job of that.”

And the Raiders had more magic to fall back on as the fourth quarter opened. Guard Drew King scored underneath, then broke the press and fed senior forward Damien Argrett for an easy bucket that made it 58-53 with 6:20 remaining.

Standing at the end of the court, waiting for King and Nathan Kennedy to elude the quick Falcon press, Argrett finished with a career-high 23 points as the last West defender back on the press left him open underneath to try and stop King or Kennedy.

“The guards were able to find him,” South head coach Jon Davis said. “We were able to break the press and get the ball in down there to him and he was able to finish.”

Admittedly, it was an odd situation for Argrett to be in. The 6-foot-6 forward used to be a guard before growing eight inches over the past year.

“This is my first year playing. People don’t know anything about me,” Argrett said. “My teammates were doing a really good job breaking the press and getting the ball down there. I tried to just put the ball in the basket.”

Try as they might after that, the Raiders couldn’t make a shot. West’s Terris Sifford drilled a jumper, then Sherrill stole a lazy pass and went the other way for a dunk. Two Horatio Everhart free throws extended the lead to 11 and the Raiders never recovered.

“There was a time there in the fourth quarter we went into a drought,” Davis said. “We had good looks at the basket and we just missed them, and then we gave up easy shots down at the other end.”

Davis wasn’t happy about South’s performance in the first half, either. His Raiders hadn’t played since last Monday against Mooresville and went 5-for-16 from the field with seven turnovers in the first 12 minutes. Sherrill, Frankie Williams and Donte Minter each scored five points in the opening quarter and helped stake West to a 23-15 edge.

Minter rolled on for 19 points, 13 boards and four blocks, while Williams put up his best numbers of the season since opening night with 13 points and seven rebounds.

“Frankie definitely played well for us tonight,” Gurley said. “Brandon White had carried us four, five games in the post defensively and I thought Frankie took that role on. That’s why Brandon didn’t play as much tonight because Frankie was playing so well.”

SOUTH (63) — King 4, Diggs 7, Childers 6, Daugherty 8, Beck 9, Kennedy 1, Girty, Faggart 5, Cook, Miller, Argrett 23.

WEST (77) — White, Trosper, Mauldin, Sifford 10, Sherril 19, Everhart 8, Dalton 5, Mattox 3, Barringer, Diggs, Williams 13, Minter 19.

South Rowan 15 11 21 16 — 63