By Mike London

mike.london@salisburypost.com

SPENCER — Seven minutes into the third quarter, North Rowan assistant Tim Bates turned to head coach Andrew Mitchell and said, “Hey, they ain’t scored yet.”
That was an accurate appraisal of the situation. The Cavaliers nearly shut out visiting West Davidson in the third quarter. Scott Hughes finally made a layup with 15 seconds left in the period, but North Rowan won the quarter 17-2 and took the game, 58-29.
“You hold a high school team under 30 points and that’s a great job of team defense,” Mitchell said. “We came out for that second half with a defensive mindset. That was great to see.”
West Davidson averages 56 points a game and Hughes averages 20.
With the exception of Josh Handy (16 points), the fourth-ranked Cavaliers didn’t shoot the ball well, but it was a classic case of an exceptional team making a good team look really bad.
“We shot horrible, and in the first half we couldn’t pass or shoot,” West Davidson coach Derrick Stokes said. “We played bad, and North is really good. For us to compete with them, we have to play our ‘A’ game. That wasn’t it.”
In the earlier meeting in Tyro, West Davidson (8-12, 2-4 CCC) brought that ‘A’ game and gave the Cavaliers all they could handle. North won 59-57 and the Green Dragons didn’t miss a game-winner at the buzzer by much. The ball hit the front rim.
The closeness of that first encounter raised North’s intensity level for the rematch.
“We knew we had to be focused from the jump,” North senior Jalen Sanders said. “We moved the ball on offense and we had a great defensive night.”
Handy hit a 3-pointer to start the game, and North, with Alonzo Sirleaf (12 points) running the floor for athletic finishes, was up 15-2 after six minutes.
The Green Dragons settled down in the second quarter and they were able to get to the halftime break trailing 26-17. They took a deep breath and tried to regroup.
But North had an overwhelming burst of defensive pressure to start the third quarter. The Cavaliers blew the game open with a 15-0 run that included two dunks by Joseph Scott and a one-handed smash by Handy.
“West Davidson is a good team,” Handy said. “The big redhead (Hughes) can go for 30 on any night and No. 3 (point guard Carson Beane) is a great facilitator for their offense. We knew we had to play well and we came out with fire. At the start of the game and at the start of the second half, we just busted them in the mouth.”
When Henderson Lentz buried a 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter, North led 47-19.
North got points from 10 different players in the second half, while the Green Dragons got points from only two — Hughes, who finished with 14, and Beane, who flipped in a shot in the waning seconds to finish with seven.
“We got into a rhythm defensively and we got productive minutes from a lot of people,” Mitchell said. “We didn’t shoot the ball the way we need to if we’re going to make a run, but we haven’t worked a lot on shooting yet. Our focus has been on defense.”
That was evident on Tuesday. The Green Dragons ran headlong into a buzz-saw, but it’s a loss that won’t linger long.
“When you lose like this, you just forget about it and move on to the next one,” Stokes said.

WEST DAVIDSON (29) — Hughes 14, Beane 7, McKinney 4, Michael 3, Simmons 1, Lanier, Adams, Beck.
NORTH ROWAN (58) — Handy 16, Sirleaf 10, Scott 10, Sanders 6, Lentz 5, Miller 3, Haley 3, Ellis 2, Alexander 2, Shields 1, Cuthbertson, Harrison, Stoner.

West Davidson 6 11 2 10 — 29
North Rowan 15 11 17 15 — 58