Defense plays big role in Northside girls’ tourney wins

Published 1:45 am Tuesday, December 10, 2024

By Jason O. Boyd

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YEATESVILLE, N.C. — The Northside High School girls’ basketball team is thriving early in the season in large part due to the play of its seniors and good defense. A great example of that was during the Northside Basketball Kickoff Tournament.

Northside picked up two wins last week in the tournament, beating Northeast Academy For Aerospace and Advanced Tech (NEAT) 61-20 and Eastern Christian Home School (TEACH) 76-61. The two wins boosted the Panthers’ record to 4-0 ahead of Tuesday’s game at Mattamuskeet and Wednesday’s game with Camden County.

TEACH gave Northside all it could handle before the Panthers boosted their defense in the second half. Northside led 30-28 at the half but had problems shaking the Trailblazers, who jumped to a 9-2 lead in the opening minutes and were tied with the Panthers at 26-all after a putback with 46 seconds left.

After Northside called an early timeout in the third quarter, senior OJ Cahoon hit a 3-pointer and converted a TEACH turnover into a layup for a 39-30 Northside lead.  The Panthers’ lead reached as high as 15 points before TEACH put together another run to cut the deficit to six before Piper Johnson had two baskets to push the margin back to 10.

“Yeah, we tried to make that adjustment,” Northside coach Michelle Leathers said. “Come out harder, pressing the ball. Pressing the ball at the top of the key.

“Try to get them to go to the hot spots on the court. Get that off-lane, come and cover the middle, if not the whole lane, that back post.”

One issue the Panthers had to deal with down the stretch was its free throw shooting. The game got rough at times, and the Trailblazers were fouling to try to get back into the game (three players fouled out) down the stretch. Northside made just 4-of-8 free throws in a stretch of about 18 seconds with under two minutes left.

However, Cahoon hit both free throws with 44 seconds left and Sophie Berry hit two more with seven seconds left for the final margin.

“Free throws. I mean, we shoot them every day. So we’ll work more on that,” Leathers said. “We saw a lot of things, myself and my coaches, that we need to work on. And we’re going to work on them.”

Cahoon had 30 points to lead all scorers. Madison Scheffler had 15 points and Tatianna Moore had 12 for Northside.

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