SILER CITY — It’s not always how you start, but more often how well you finish that determines the outcome of a game.
After battling feisty Jordan-Matthews to a 13-all stalemate through the first eight minutes, Northwood outscored the Lady Jets 22-6 over the middle two quarters to open up a sizable advantage and cruised to a 49-28 non-conference triumph last week in Frank N. Justice Gymnasium.
The Lady Chargers’ 14th consecutive win over their cross-county foe permitted Northwood to even its season record at 2-2, while J-M lost its fourth outing in a row in falling to 1-4 for the year.
Gianna McManaman and Natalie Bell notched 11 points apiece and Rae McClarty added 10 for the Lady Chargers, who connected on 19-of-49 (39 percent) of their field goal attempts while turning the ball over 14 times.
Avery Headen and Ellia Wright tallied seven points each to lead Jordan-Matthews, which shot 11-of-30 (37 percent) from the floor and held a slim 25-24 advantage on the boards but committed 27 turnovers.
“We always seem to have some jitters playing on J-M’s court, and with two freshmen in the starting lineup we had trouble establishing any early momentum,” said Lady Chargers coach Cameron Vernon. “But I thought we set the tone in the second quarter when we picked up our defense and limited them to two points in the period before carrying that intensity into the second half. At the same time we became more patient on offense and began moving the ball much better while looking for the high-percentage shot, and it helped putting three players in double figures to give us balanced scoring.”
Lady Jets coach Charles Byrd was unavailable for comments following the game.
The opening stanza was a seesaw affair the featured three ties and four lead changes prior to Jordan-Matthews managing to pull even following a Wright free throw and lane drive over the last 1:06 of the period.
After J-M seized its final advantage at 15-13 on Makayla Glover’s layup with 6:54 left in the first half, the Lady Jets failed to score another point the rest of the quarter while committing a rash of traveling calls and lane violations that allowed Northwood to run off the last nine points of the stanza to fashion a seven-point lead at the break.
With Jordan-Matthews struggling to put the ball in the hole in the third period, the Lady Chargers expanded their advantage to 35-19 by the end of the quarter and continued to pull away down the stretch, never letting the Lady Jets trim the difference to less than 14 the rest of the evening, while a Bell layup with exactly one minute remaining accounted for the final spread and gave Northwood its biggest lead of the contest.