High School hoops rewind

Dudley had and easy time with Smith on Friday night, winning the boys game 61-44. The girls game was much closer with the young ladies from Dudley prevailing 40-38.

Brandon Pennix looks very strong for Dudley(he had 24 against the Golden Eagles) and I like the Panthers overall player rotation with Pennix, Mike Coger, and Ricky Smith seeing big minutes inside. Josh Cobb will be a steady guard out front for the Panthers, while he will get help from Brennan Wyatt, plus on the wings Marcus Heath and PJ Hairston are secure. Hairston, the freshman phenom will be something special before it’s all said and done. Kenny Okoro, Trey Goddette, and David Anderson will also give the Panthers valuable minutes of playing time as the season progresses. That’s 10 possible Panther players to be used in different combinations. The rotation will be rock-solid.

Dudley will be deeper than usual and that might be a big key to the Panthers all-around efforts this year. The “Big Cat”, Mike Coger, will have to get much stonger and be more fluid inside if Dudley is to bring home the major hardware, but if things continue on as indicated, Pennix will be someone’s player-of-the-year and Hairston will show up as the top freshman in the area.

Dudley’s Helen Terry is one of our area’s most confident players and nothing seems to faze her. She will work with Brianna Patterson to form one of the county’s quickest backcourts. Watch out for #12(Terry) and #1(Patterson). The Smith girls have some heighth this year and they are a much improved team but they need more experience in key game situations and then that will help them down the stretch when the games are on the line.

The Grimsley girls remained unbeaten, now at (7-0), after their 72-19 romp over West Forsyth. Trumae Lucas led the way with 16 for the Whirlies. The Grimsley boys weren’t quite so lucky falling to WF 69-57. How about that fight at Grimsley yesterday, that’s messed up…..

Page swept Eastern Randolph with Jasmine Gill’s 27 points leading the girls to victory and maybe a surprise here, Michael McIntyre led the Pirate boys with 23.(Page girls over ER 62-39/Pirate boys roll 86-57) Northeast swiped two from Eastern taking the boys match-up by 10, 49-39. Tee Cleveland became one of those young men who we said needed to step up inside for NEG, as Tee had 12 points and he hit eight huge free throws during the crucial end-of-game minutes. I believe one of Tee’s relatives is a local minister and his prayers have been answered and I’m sure the Cleveland household will be a happy one this weekend. The NEG girls out-scored EG 15-4 in the first quarter and then finished with a 14-4 advantage in the fourth quarter en-route to a 58-25 Ram win over the Wildcats.

Bruce Woodall had 15 points and Greensboro Day School improved to (11-1) with the Bengals 75-35 win over North Raleigh Christian. GDS has Christ School with the Plumlee brothers coming in to the campus on Lawndale Dirve for a 3:30 contest this afternoon. GDS girls fall to NRC 49-21. Ragsdale picked up two big wins over Southeast. The girls game was close with the Tigers pulling it out 60-55 over SEG, while the Tiger boys dominated with Ladarious Canty having his way going on to a 24 point out-burst against SEG(brother Jay had 14 for Ragsdale and there’s getting to be too many Cantys to count). Those were two key Mid-Piedmont 3-A conference wins for the Tigers.

I saw Tyler Rankin on Friday evening, he is home for the holidays, coming in from Pittsburgh after exams. Rankin, a former Ragsdale Tiger, is a Pitt Panther and he was glad to hear that Ricky Lewis Jr. and Doug Sigmon got their State HS Football Championship for the Dudley Panthers.

Northwest got a split with WG, as the Viking girls moved to (7-0) after their 67-36 win over the Hornets while the WG boys grabbed a 77-72 victory from NWG in OT. The NWG girls, along with Grimsley and Page are on a collision course. This is going to get very interesting for these three young ladies’ programs.

High Point Andrews found the going easy against the High Point Central boys with 56-44 win. HPA is going to be a team that the other 3-A squads are going to have to watch out for. In a couple of other girls games, SWG evened their record at 3-3 with a 58-30 walloping of Winston-Salem Prep and Southern Guilford got just their seocond victory of the season, but it was a good one, as the Storm stopped Randleman by 7, 51-44.

Remember it’s the unbeaten Northern Guilford Nighthawks taking on NWG tonight at Guilford College(game time 6pm), Greensboro Day faces Christ School this afternoon at GDS(3:30), Dudley hosts Durham Hillside(6pm), and the Western Guilford boys travel to Bassett, Virginia.

On a note from Don Tilley of the Greensboro Parks and Recreation Department we join in the mourning of the passing of Eric Hairston a former Morehead High School and Elon Uninversity basketball player. “Big E”, as Eric was known, died at age 42 this past Tuesday during a pick-up game up in Reidsville. Our thoughts go out to the family and friends of Mr. Hairston. He was the top shot-blocker in Elon basketball history. Hairston was an all-conference and All-District 26 player for Elon. For full details on the funeral services check out Page C7 of today’s News and Record.

One thought on “High School hoops rewind

  1. BTW – that was jay’s brother, Ladarious Canty that went off for 24 points. He was all over the floor harrassing the SEG guards.

Comments are closed.