WCDS men advance to Charlotte Country Day

By Neil Fuller
Published in Sports on February 23, 2005 2:03 PM

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The Wayne Country Day men's basketball team had Waccamaw Academy by the numbers Tuesday night.

In every possible sense.

The sixth-seeded Chargers -- including several members of the school's conference champion JV squad -- used a 16-0 second-quarter run to take control and handed the visiting Warriors a 59-40 defeat in the opening round of the NCISAA Class 1-A playoffs.

No. 11 seed Waccamaw (12-10) made the trip with a mere seven players on its active roster.

"We wanted to get them going from baseline to baseline," Wayne Country Day coach Randy Tilley said. "We wanted to get into our trapping defense to push the tempo up. I told our guys at halftime that we were going to wear them down. We had a bunch of championship JV guys on our bench tonight, so we had plenty of depth.

"The plan was to use our numbers and tire them out."

It was a plan that almost worked to perfection.

Waccamaw opened the fourth quarter on a 9-0 run -- including two 3-pointers by Carlton Floyd -- to draw within 51-38.

Floyd led all scorers with 17 points, but the depleted Warriors simply ran out of gas after making their final push.

"My players hung in there. They didn't quit," Waccamaw coach Clarence Ganus said. "They continued to play hard and fought back. Being here with only seven guys was tough. I know we got a little tired trying to keep our seven players rotated. We got winded."

Wayne Country Day (19-7) faces third-seeded Gaston Day in a quarterfinal matchup on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at Charlotte Country Day School.

Oscar Ball scored 15 points, and Adam Wright added 14 to lead the balanced Chargers.

Wayne Country Day claimed a 34-16 lead at the break after limiting the Warriors to one field goal during an eight-minute stretch in the first half.

Tavor Waters had five second-quarter points to outscore Waccamaw single-handedly during the period.

"We wanted to bring them out of their zone and make them match up," Tilley said. "We wanted to force them to match up, then we could attack the glass."

Notes: Gaston Day carries a 24-9 record into the NCISAA quarterfinals. ... Spenser Briggs scored nine points for WCDS. ... WCDS was 12-of-13 at the free-throw line. ... Ahmad McBride scored 13 points for Waccamaw.