PINETOWN — South Creek continued to streak towards the postseason as it won its fourth straight game and seventh of its last eight by edging past Northside 48-41 on Tuesday.
The Cougars (9-3, Four Rivers) rocketed into second place in the Four Rivers Conference standings last week and refused to let it go as forward Laquan Boston scored nine of his game-high 16 points in the fourth quarter to lead his team to victory.
“He just stepped up,” South Creek coach Darryl Pittman said. “I told (Boston) this is your quarter, this is what you’ve been playing for. You’re a senior and you know how to win. Step it up.”
South Creek began the quarter trailing 36-34, but tied it at 38 after a Boston bucket. The Cougars would take the lead shortly after when Boston drove to the lane for a layup and was fouled. Boston would hit the free throw to put his team up 41-38. The Cougars would not trail for the rest of the game.
While South Creek seemingly could not miss, the same could not be said for the Panthers, who went cold in the fourth quarter.
“We missed so many easy shots,” Northside coach Mike Procter said. “I bet we missed about five layups in a matter of three to five minutes (in the fourth quarter) and then we let (Boston) get on the offensive glass. That was the two keys to this game.”
Northside (5-8 Four Rivers) was red-hot in the third as star 6-8 freshman center Edrice Adebayo erupted for nine points in eight minutes and put his team ahead 34-29 after a wicked baseline drop step move led to an easy layup.
Adebayo would finish the game leading all scorers with 19 points, but scored only three of them in the fourth quarter.
“We stopped throwing it to him, but we were getting good shots. We were just missing our good shots,” Procter said. “Then we tensed up and we just didn’t get the ball to Edrice like we should have.”
When Adebayo did catch the ball he was routinely greeted by two South Creek defenders.
“We wanted to make him work. In the first half he was just roaming free,” Pittman said. “We wanted to make him give the ball up and then just D everybody up and make somebody else beat us one-on-one. We didn’t want him to do it because he’s very capable of beating one-on-one coverage. We had to have two men on him.”
The two teams will finish off the regular season tonight against rivals as Northside will host Southside and South Creek will host Riverside.

South Creek    15    11    8    14    —    48
Northside    7    12    17    5    —    41
Cougars (48)
Sha’he Morning 14, Barnes 2, Laquan Boston 16, Durham 7, Williams 6, Farmer 3.
Panthers (41)
Sherman 7, Slade 1, Woods 6, Edrice Adebayo 19, Peartree 4, Jones 2, Arthur 3.