West Craven uses strong second half to defeat South Lenoir
By Scott Cole
VANCEBORO | On Friday night, West Craven topped the visiting South Lenoir Blue Devils, 60-37, to stay undefeated in the Eastern Carolina Conference.
“We played solid defense for most of the game, but we couldn’t make a shot,” South Lenoir coach Jeremy Barnett said. “We battle hard. We will fight any team, but we struggle a lot offensively. That’s been our problem all season.”
Laqueze Campbell got the Eagles off to a hot start with two 3-pointers to begin the game. It was four minutes before the Blue Devils got on the board, but the bounced back quick, as a late three pointer by Rico Freeman would bring South Lenoir to within 10-9 after one.
“We gave up 37 points. That works out to less than 10 points a quarter, so that’s good,” West Craven coach David Fernandez said. “We had some of our top guys not score well tonight, but we topped them by 20 points. That is a good sign for us. Campbell was solid for us tonight. He’s been sensational all year for us.”
South Lenoir started off the second quarter strong, and at one point would lead by five. West Craven came roaring back, led by Campbell who hit another 3-point shot. Overall, he would score 18 of his game-high 26 points in the first half. West Craven would hold a 26-21 lead at halftime.
“We shut them down in the third quarter,” Fernandez said. “We didn’t give them any good solid shots and we boxed them out so they couldn’t get any rebounds. That helped to put us up in the second half.”
West Craven began to pull away from form South Lenoir in the third quarter and the Blue Devils, who played scrappy all night, just couldn’t keep up.
Raines would lead the Blue Devils with 10 points with Jaeden Dixon adding eight points and 10 rebounds.
“We know that going against a good team, it’s going to be tough. I wish we could have scored more than 37 points against them,” Barnett said. “We took a lot of shots, but they need to go in. We have a lot of young kid who play hard. We give our guys a lot of minutes, trying to find something that will work. We just can’t do a lot when we are smaller than everyone else out there and have had key players out.”
Sheldon Yates would earn a double-double for the Eagles, scoring 14 points and grabbing 10 rebounds.
SOUTH LENOIR: Raines 10, Dixon 8, Freeman 7, Miller 6, Kennion 4, Carr 2.
WEST CRAVEN: Laqueze Campbell 26, Yates 14, Latrell Campbell 4, Gillyard 4, D Campbell 3, Inmam 3, Jones 2, Abrams 2, Wallace 2
