Cougars wake up in second half

By Rudy Coggins
Published in Sports on February 7, 2015 11:36 PM

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rcoggins@newsargus.com

Frank Preston's buzzer-beating 3-pointer created a 32-32 deadlock Friday evening and gave Ayden-Grifton some much-needed confidence as they trotted toward the locker room.

Just one thing, Chargers.

You never wake up a sleeping Cougar.

Goldsboro yawned, stretched its paws and roared to life in the third quarter. The backcourt tandem of Rasheen Artis and Myron Carmon went on a feeding frenzy inside the paint and sparked the Cougars to a 66-57, senior night victory inside Norvell T. Lee Gymnasium.

"(At halftime) we talked about getting tougher on the boards because their two post men had 21 points (actually 22) combined at halftime, so we had to get tougher and he told the guards to go down and help them," said Artis, who reached the 1,000-point mark for his career early in the second quarter.

"I think we took what (GHS) Coach (Stephens) said to heart, we played harder, played tougher, played stronger on the defensive side, rebound ... we gave them nothing easy."

Ayden-Grifton (4-13 overall) couldn't convert open looks and Goldsboro (18-3) managed to get out in transition. That allowed Artis and Carmon to slash toward the basket, draw in the defense and create scoring chances for their teammates.

Joe Baker scored seven of his nine second-half points during that stretch. The Cougars built a double-digit lead toward the end of the quarter, but saw it shaved to 54-45.

The Chargers pulled to within 59-49 on Preston's offensive putback around the 5-minute mark. They would threaten one more time.

"I thought we didn't get a couple of shots down that we needed to, we should have worked the post a little more and settled for the outside shot a little too much I thought when we had the post game working," A-G head coach John Moye said.

"At the start of the second half, we turned the ball over at the wrong time."

Goldsboro maintained its double-digit lead until the final 67 seconds. A turnover and consecutive baskets underneath from starting forward Jake Wright and reserve Chris Johnson closed the gap to 64-57. Wright finished with a double-double -- team-high 20 points, 10 rebounds.

The Cougars erased some time off of the clock, hit two key free throws and finished the Eastern Carolina 2-A portion of its home schedule unbeaten (5-0).

Artis shared game-high scoring honors with Wright, but also had five rebounds, five assists and three steals. Carmon scored 11, while Jalin Thomas tallied 10 points and pulled down six boards.

"They're a tough matchup for us, their post guys play really well against us and I thought the first half we didn't have that intensity we needed to have on senior night," Stephens said. "I just thought we got a little tougher in the second half. The first half we were not ourselves, we were flying around the court, but we weren't playing position defense.

"Their bigs came to play. The second half, we slowed them down a little bit and we were able to get out in transition a little bit from rebounding the ball."