By Bill Kiser

Salisbury Post

LANDIS — With the South Rowan girls basketball team ahead by 28 points at halftime against R.J. Reynolds, you’d think Raiders head coach Jim Brooks would be the most relaxed guy in the gym.

But Brooks was anything but relaxed, and he made sure his players didn’t relax either.

South Rowan responded in the second half, crushing the Demons

81-32 on Friday night to snap a five-game Central Piedmont Conference losing streak.

Taylor May scored a season-high 20 points and pulled down 10 rebounds for the Raiders (7-12, 2-6), who had three other players finish in double figures.

Kim Wilson hit four 3-pointers and finished with 19 points for South Rowan, Katherine Van Wieren added 16 points and 12 rebounds, and Katie Wise had 10 points and blocked six shots.

The Raiders last played a week earlier, but they didn’t show many signs of a long layoff as they hit their first five shots and went 10-of-15 from the field in the first quarter to race out to a 27-6 lead.

By the end of the game, South — whose only other conference victory came against Reynolds earlier this season — had forced 31 turnovers (22 off steals) and held the Comets (1-18, 0-9) to 23.1-percent shooting. By comparison, the Raiders shot 44.8 percent from the field.

“That’s what we preached all week,” Brooks said. “The girls worked hard all week, and our goal was for the girls to play hard all 32 minutes. I think they pretty much accomplished that tonight.”

And with three players scoring in double figures in the first half — May had 17 points, Van Wieren 12 and Wilson 11 — the Raiders upped their lead to 48-20 at the break.

At halftime, Brooks talked about playing even harder.

“I was extremely proud of the way they came out for the third quarter,” Brooks said. “It would’ve been real easy for them to start going through the motions, but they came out and played hard.

“That’s what I asked of them at the half — come out and play hard. That doesn’t mean running up the score, but we wanted to play hard defense and make them get down the floor.”

South pushed its lead to 49 points (73-24) by the end of the quarter.

Reynolds (32) — Smart 11, Hoguland 8, Cuthbertson 7, Franklin 5, Vinluan 1, Rinard, Dunn, Odell, Buchanan, Williams, Gywnn.

south rowan (81) — May 20, Wilson 19, Van Wieren 16, Wise 10, Morton 6, Houston 4, Haywood 4, Brown 2, Garrett.

Reynolds 6 14 4 8 — 32

S. Rowan 27 21 25 8 — 81