By: DYLAN JOHNSON

The P.S. Jones Middle School boys and girls basketball teams were swept at home Monday by A.G. Cox Middle School, the girls lost 59-16 and the boys fell 57-29.

The Demons’ (2-3, 1-3 conference) boy’s team was severely outclassed by the undefeated Raiders (8-0, 4-0 conference), being outscored in all four quarters.

Head coach Marcus Freeman lamented the Demons’ lack of aggression in the loss.

“We’re in the Pitt County Conference. We’ve been in the conference for a while now; this is my third year here. We just don’t match their aggression, their size,” Freeman said.

The loss is the third straight, following losses to Hope Middle and E.B. Aycock, after starting the season 2-0. The Demons were outscored 11-7 in the first quarter and 16-7 in the second for a 27-14 halftime deficit.

They were outscored 30-15 in the second half, 14-8 in the third and 16-7 in the fourth quarter.
“We came out flat and once you start the first half flat it’s hard to recover from that,” Freeman said.

P.S. Jones moved the ball well on offense, according to Freeman, but just weren’t able to get any results.

P.S. Jones did go to the line a lot more than the Raiders did, but failed to take advantage of it, shooting just 4-for-12 from the free-throw line. A.G. Cox on the other hand, was a perfect 3-for-3 from the charity stripe.

“Offense tonight was overall pretty decent. If we could move the ball a little more, that would be good,” Freeman said. “Defense, we didn’t do too much too good. Offensively we got the shots we wanted to get up.”

The A.G. Cox girls team also remained undefeated and moved to 8-0 with the win, while P.S. Jones fell to 1-3. The Raiders’ girls got to the line for 20 foul shots, sinking seven of them. P.S. Jones’ girls were just 1-of-6 from the free-throw line. Neither team had any players get into double figure scoring.

Next up, the Demons’ boys take on Greene County Thursday in a matchup against the last-place Rams. With a win, they would snap their losing streak and improve to .500 on the season.

Freeman said the team would work on some aggression drills in practice and get up as many shots as they can to try and get more to fall in the game.

“We’ve got to find our identity first, and then see what we can do.”