ROAN MOUNTAIN – Not even manipulation of the score could stop the North Greene boys from going on the road and starting District 1-1A play with a win on Friday night.
The Huskies started fast on Friday, but then had to hold off a rally by Cloudland to collect a 50-44 win in Roan Mountain.
“I don’t think we played very well, and a lot of the things that we worked to correct in practice showed themselves today,” North Greene coach Matt Weems said. “It does feel good to win, and I don’t want to take away from that. Going on the road is hard, but from here on out we can’t let teams hang around. I’m happy with the win, but we need to play better.”
North Greene started quickly on Friday with Tyler Britton sinking a three-pointer and Havoc Fair scoring four points. Isaac Gaby lofted in a floater and after Thomas Darnall turned a runner from the left block into three points the Huskies led 12-2 less than four minutes into the contest.
“I felt like we found some good looks early and we were making shots. We were patient and worked to get the looks we wanted. Then we got away from that and started going for the home run play. Once they started pressing us things began to unravel,” Weems said.
Cloudland was able to get going with three-pointers from Bryce Birchfield and Connor Carpenter, but North Greene went to the second quarter leading 19-10.
The second quarter got going with North Greene’s Jaiden Bailey stealing the ball at midcourt and setting up Isaac Gaby for a three-pointer from the corner. With 6:51 left in the period Gaby sent a pass across the formation to Fair for a triple that pushed the lead to 25-10.
North Greene went on a more than six-minute scoring drought. But if you believe the official scorer that drought went all the way to halftime.
Cloudland did begin to apply more pressure on defense and it threw the Huskies out of their rhythm on offense. The Highlanders made their first field goal with 1:45 left to play and that closed the gap to 25-14.
With 30 seconds remaining in the first half Gaby sent a pass into Bailey who quickly laid a shot from the left block off the glass for what would have been a 27-16 lead.
The ball went through the net, and Cloudland stepped beyond the baseline to throw the ball inbounds with no objection from the officials. At that point the Highlanders’ official scorer was either struck with a case of temporary amnesia, or had more nefarious intentions. Nevertheless, the shot that hundreds saw fall through the iron did not enter the official record.
North Greene went into the locker room looking at a scoreboard that read 27-19, and they came back out looking at 25-19 on the board.
When the margin was changed both the visiting book and members of the media asked about the scoring anomaly. After all the Huskies only made three shots in the quarter, so finding a discrepancy should have been quickly decipherable. Those requests for clarity were met with blank stares and no comment from home team’s staff at scorers table.
Of course, the error was mentioned to the referees before the second half started, but they were uninterested in being inconvenienced by something as trivial as fair play.
The Highlanders started the second half with not only a new score, but new energy and when Gavyn Shell turned a steal into a breakaway layup North Greene’s lead was down to 25-24.
With 5:56 left in the third quarter Grayson Cole put back a miss that put Cloudland on top 26-25. Of course, had the score been kept correctly the Huskies would have never lost the lead.
Kingston Ricker came off the bench and gave North Greene a much-needed boost. He scored the Huskies’ next seven points and gave them a 32-29 lead.
Tyler Britton began to warm up from beyond the arc and hit from deep three times in the quarter. That included a straight-away trey just before the buzzer that pushed North Greene’s lead to 43-36.
Cloudland closed the gap once again at the start of the fourth quarter. Uriah Jarrett got inside for a pair of buckets that closed the gap to 43-40.
North Greene was able to tighten up on defense in the closing stretch and only allowed one field goal over the final 5:35.
Darnell dropped in a runner to give North Greene a little cushion and the Huskies did the rest of their scoring at the free-throw line on the way to a 50-44 win.
Britton led North Greene on Friday with 14 points and Gaby finished with 10 points.
Jarrett scored 11 points for Cloudland, Cole had 10 and Birchfield scored 10.
GIRLS
CLOUDLAND 35, NORTH GREENE 26
When you hold your opponent to 35 points you expect to win every time, but on Friday night the North Greene girls struggled mightily to get shots to fall and dropped their first game in District 1-1A play to Cloudland 35-26.
“I think from the tipoff their physicality was hard to deal with. We tried to prepare our players for that, but we had a lot of new players that found out in a hurry what its like to come up here and try to win,” North Greene coach James Buchanan said. “We have a lot of stuff on tape that we’ll go back and watch and hopefully learn from. We have take what we can from every game and try to get better.”
Eowyn McCoury got the game the started with a triple, but then the game turned into a defensive struggle as more than four passed before another shot dropped through the iron.
The Lady Highlanders were quick to apply a second defender to Tralyn Southerland every time she got the ball in the paint, but that left someone open on the perimeter for North Greene. The Lady Huskies found the open shooter but missed their first five three-point attempts.
That was the case for most of the night. The Lady Huskies had chances to score, but no matter where they shot from they could not seem to find the right touch.
“We struggled shooting. Some days they go in, some days they don’t,” Buchanan said. “You would like to think if you hold someone to 40 or less that you would win, but we couldn’t make it to 30. Mayde late in the game that was fatigue. But as bad as we shot, if we just make three more this is a completely different game.”
North Greene’s first points came with 2:43 left to play in the first quarter when Josie Graham scored on a third-chance putback.
In the final minutes of the first period Cloudland finally found some offensive success and after six points from Abnella Jones it led 11-5.
North Greene’s offensive struggles continued in the second quarter and they managed to add just five more points to their total.
Cloudland’s Abby Clawson was able to sink a pair of turnaround shots from the block and Makinna Shell was able to score inside twice as the lead reached 24-10 at halftime.
North Greene’s only field goal of the quarter was a three-pointer from Ella Head.
Eva Leonard started the second half with a corner three for the Lady Huskies, but they still struggled to put a dent in the lead despite holding Cloudland scoreless almost four minutes.
At the 3:02 mark North Greene’s next field goal, a runner from the right side by Head closed the gap to 26-16.
Cloudland’s Shell scored the next four points and the Lady Highlanders went to the final frame leading 30-16.
With 5:31 left to play Cloudland led 34-16, but finally North Greene followed with some offensive success, just not enough to turn the outcome.
North Greene scored 10 points over the final 5:10, and that started with Head landing a short jumper from the block. Southerland rolled in a scoop shot around her double team, and Graham scored on an offensive rebound. But Cloudland finished the night leading 35-26.
Head led North Greene with eight points. Shell led Cloudland with 13 points.
