ASHEBORO — Asheboro coach Brian Nance said after his team’s six-point loss to Wheatmore Friday night in first-round action of the 29th annual The Courier-Tribune Christmas Invitational Tournament, the Blue Comets felt they had something to prove against Jordan-Matthews in Saturday afternoon’s consolation matchup.
Placing four players in double figures, Asheboro raced out to a 7-0 lead in the opening two minutes of play and led 19-5 after one quarter before streaking to a 30-point halftime advantage en route to demolishing the Jets 88-62 in a foul-plagued contest on the winners’ home court.
The runaway victory lifted the Blue Comets to 7-4 on the year, while J-M was sent spiraling to its fifth straight loss in falling to 4-7 for the season.
Thomas McIntosh tallied 20 points, Noah Watkins chipped in 18, Tramir Martin registered 11 and Elias Alston added 10 for Asheboro, which shot 55% (29-of-53) from the floor and held a 29-26 edge on the boards while turning the ball over 27 times.
Lanice Hedgepeth recorded a season-high 27 points — all in the second half — to lead Jordan-Matthews, which connected on 44 percent (20-of-45) of its field goal attempts while committing 31 turnovers.
A total of 59 infractions were called in the game, with both teams having two players foul out. The Blue Comets converted 21-of-33 free throw attempts, while the Jets sank 20-of-41 tries from the charity stripe.
“After collapsing in the final two minutes last night in the loss to Wheatmore, we talked about coming out today and playing hard with a lot of effort,” Nance said. “We accomplished what we wanted to offensively by getting off to a quick start, and through three quarters we took control of the game. But credit J-M for battling all the way, and we didn’t have an answer for the left-handed kid (Hedgepeth), who scored 21 of his points in the fourth quarter.
“Neither team adjusted well to a tightly-called game, but when the whistles weren’t stopping play every 10-12 seconds we were able to do some good things.”
Jordan-Matthews’ coach Rodney Wiley explained yet another slow start by his squad doomed them from the beginning.
“We had some good looks at the outset but couldn’t put the ball in the basket, while their defensive pressure caused us to have a lot of early turnovers,” said Wiley. “Early foul trouble also gave us problems, especially when leading scorer Camden Fuquay picked up his third foul midway through the second quarter and had to spend a lot of time on the bench.
“I think our pressure affected Asheboro in the second half and finally got us going about the time Lanice was able to start attacking their 1-3-1 zone for a lot of layups.”
With the Jets committing a dozen turnovers in the opening stanza while only making two-of-seven field goal attempts, the Blue Comets sped to a 14-point advantage in the first eight minutes and expanded their lead to 49-15 on Alex Pulido’s layup with 55.2 seconds remaining in the initial half prior to J-M’s Jacquez Thompson’s pull-up off the right baseline and four Huston Causey free throws countering a Kejuan Logan layup to trim the gap to 51-21 at the break.
Asheboro managed to stretch its advantage to as much as 38 points on three occasions in the second half, the last time at 83-45 following Martin’s layup with 4:11 to go in the fourth quarter.
Hedgepeth then contributed 10 points during a 17-0 Jordan-Matthews’ run that narrowed the margin to 21 before the Blue Comets closed out the rout with Jordan McNair’s three-pointer from the left wing and Alston’s fast break layup over the final 42.8 seconds.