Southern Wayne boys keep postseason hopes intact

By Cam Ellis
Published in Sports on January 28, 2015 1:48 PM

• Print
• Email

cellis@newsargus.com

PIKEVILLE -- You would have never been able to tell that Tuesday night's matchup between Charles B. Aycock and Southern Wayne was a battle of teams with a combined 29 losses on the year.

In a game with postseason implications, the Saints picked up an important road win, 56-38, in Eastern Carolina 3-A/4-A Conference play. Southern Wayne (5-13 overall, 2-5) swept the regular-season series, while the Golden Falcons dropped to 3-17 and 1-7.

The game started off slowly, with both teams failing to score until Aycock hit a mid-range jumper with 4 minutes to go in the first quarter. Southern Wayne settled into its offense and began to exploit their size advantage at nearly every position on the court.

Once the Saints' shots starting falling, the offense rolled.

"I told them to settle down and play our game," Southern Wayne head coach Dwight Smith said. "One we started doing that, the basket started getting bigger for us."

Montrell Plummer led the Saints with 18 points. Chris Williams added 12 points and Marquail Roddick had seven for Southern Wayne.

"It's a great win," Smith added. "It's the second half of the season and we've talked about winning 5 out of 6 and this is a great start to that."

Jarde Spruill led CBA with 10 points, including six in the fourth quarter. Bryce Jordan had eight points and Cameron Kornegay added seven of his own.

"We were kind of lackadaisical from the start," CBA head coach Dave Elmore said. "Coming out of halftime, we tried to claw back into it. But then they hit three consecutive shots and that was the back-breaker."

The loss was a step back for Aycock, which had been playing better as of late. Failure to do the little things -- Elmore listed ball security, boxing out, and hitting free to name a few -- hurt the Falcons early on and came back to bite them when they started a second-half comeback.

"We didn't do the little things that we preach all the time," he said. "I don't know if we boxed out all night. We didn't use pump fakes to get them up in the air. Instead of using those pump fakes, we tried to go straight up with them and with the athleticism they have, that's not going to be successful for our kids."