By Bill Kiser

Salisbury Post

MOORESVILLE — South Rowan boys coach John Davis likened Friday night’s non-conference game against Mooresville to a boxing match.

The Raiders landed several solid jabs, but the Blue Devils that landed the final blow in beating South

79-70 for their first win of the season.

Lamario Johnson scored a game-high 20 points to lead four players in double figures for Mooresville (1-4), which snapped a four-game losing streak.

Hunter Henley added 17 points, including five 3-pointers. Ty Sutton came off the bench to score 12 points, and Chris Patterson had 11 for the Blue Devils.

David Wolford scored 19 points for the Raiders (2-4), who have lost four of their last five games. Derek Davis added 15 points and Wesley Honeycutt scored 10.

“We were just sparring with each other,” Davis said. & quot;We were both pretty evenly matched up, but they were able to land the knockout punch late in the fourth quarter.”

After battling through 16 ties and 17 lead changes over 31/2 quarters, Mooresville finally took command with a five-point run — off two Gabe Mercer free throws and Henley’s fifth

3-pointer — to go ahead

70-65 with 1:38 remaining.

South Rowan last led with 3:12 left in the game when Bo Caldwell’s jumper put the Raiders up 62-61, but Sutton hit a short jumper with 2:45 left to put the Blue Devils back in front. Mercer followed with a layup for a 65-62 lead.

South managed to tie the score one more time — Honeycutt nailed a 3-pointer with 2:15 left to knot the game at 65-65 — but Mercer’s and Henley’s baskets gave Mooresville the lead for good.

South Rowan cut the Blue Devils’ lead to three points on two Caldwell free throws with 1:10 left, but four free throws pushed Mooresville’s margin to 74-67 with 28 seconds remaining.

The Raiders had one last chance, with Davis’ second

3-pointer of the game pulling South within 74-70 with 22 seconds left.

“We got ourselves down but got back into it,” Davis said.

“I felt like we still had a chance, but we needed to knock down a 3. We got that, but we needed for them to miss some free throws.”

That didn’t happen — Mooresville hit 3-for-4 from the line, and Johnson capped the Blue Devils’ win with a resounding fast-break dunk as the buzzer sounded.

South Rowan actually had more chances to score thanks to 24 Mooresville turnovers that led to 15 more field-goal attempts.

But the Raiders couldn’t convert, shooting 32.4 percent from the field (23-of-71), including just 10-for-33 from 3-point range, and making 14-for-24 from the free-throw line.

“We’ve got to do a better job of that,” Davis said of South’s shooting. “We’ll shoot them

(3-pointers) in a heartbeat, and sometimes we’ll make them. … But for some reason we’ve never shot well here, and I don’t know why.

“We just played our game … and we got the looks we wanted. Give (Mooresville) credit — tonight they played better than we did.”

south ROWAN (70) — Wolford 19, Davis 15, Honeycutt 10, Bettis 7, Charles 6, Caldwell 6, Shaver 5, Morrison 2, Morgan, Hagerty.

Mooresville (79) — Johnson 20, Henley 17, Sutton 12, Patterson 11, Mercer 8, Millsaps 7, Leach 2, Maynard 2, Smith.

S. Rowan 12 17 25 16 — 70

Mooresville 10 19 21 29 — 79

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Contact Bill Kiser at sports@salisburypost.com.