Last night’s game at NEG with the Northern Guilford Nighthawks taking on the Northeast Guilford Rams was fun and it was exciting. Northern is the first-year school using only 9th and 10th graders but that isn’t stopping these kids. They are now (2-0) in the Triad 3-A conference after last evening’s 50-47 victory over NEG.
I set this game up for our radio broadcast early in the week knowing it would be a thriller and it was but it didn’t start out that way. I watched Northern defeat Northwest 64-50 at Guilford College back in mid-December and I was certain after that night that these Nighthawks were for real. Sure they are, and then Coach Kowalewski’s guys come out and fall behind 11-0 to NEG at the outset of the Friday night headliner. But the Nighthawks were not going home early, every game for them is a road contest and they weren’t going to let NEG off the hook that easy.
Nothern went on a 6-2 run to cut the lead to 13-6 at the end of one quarter. The Nighthawks continued their climb back to respectablity and sawed the lead down to 28-22, NEG up by ony six points at the half. At the end of three periods the NEG lead was down to 2 points at 38-36 and then Norhern got a key basket from Jacob Lawson with less than thirty seconds to play to go up 48-47 and then two key free throws by JR Grant and the final scores reads:Northern 50, NEG 47.
The Nighthawks are now (8-3) overall and (2-0) in Triad 3-A conference play. This turned out to be one of the most exciting games I have been around in quite a while. It sort of reminded me of Dudley playing a regional final down in Greenville at ECU for the right to go to the State Championship game. It was that tight and that exciting.
Northern has some players. Jonathan Frye(ball-handling, three point shooting, dunks) may well be the best of best of the best but Jacob Lawson(blocked-shots, rebounding, dunks) is mighty close and Lamot Asad(lane penetration, floating shots) was also very impressive. JR Grant scored some very important baskets down the stretch plus Michael Neal and Dylan Berry are guards that are a huge part of what this young group of freshman and sophomores are trying to accomplish. Frye had 14 points, Lawson 13, and Asad 12 to lead the Nighthawks to victory on Friday night at NEG. Seth Hawkins had 14, Markee Brown 9, Tee Cleveland 7, and Jamal Rasool 6 to pace NEG(6-5).
Northern Guilford has road games next week at Western Guilford, Rockingham County, and at Dudley before having their first-ever home game at Northern on January 18.
In other action last night the NEG girls were victorious over Northern 62-40. Grimsley’s girls crushed Reidsville 68-17 to move to (13-0) on the season and the Grimsley boys were winners 69-59 over Reidsville behind Keith Manley’s 16 points and five blocked-shots. Ragsdale’s boys barely pulled it out but stopped Eastern Randolph 77-73 while the Ragsdale girls whipped ER 56-44. Dudley took a double-dip from Bartlett Yancey winning the boys contest 88-45 and the girls game goes to Dudley 65-22. The NWG boys got a huge win over Southwest 69-57 while the Viking girls go to (13-1) with their 58-47 win against SWG. High Point Andrews took two from HP Central 62-41 boys and 58-42 girls. The SEG girls were winners at Trinity 64-40 with Amy Beasley collecting 18 points but the Falcon boys went down hard losing 57-36 to the Bulldogs. One other score for you, HP Wesleyan’s girls romped over Northside Christian out of Charlotte, 55-10.