Tonight Northern once again pulls out to leads twice of 16 points but there was no slowing the ball down by Northern Nash and the Lady Knights stuck it to the Lady Gryphons 52-39. The win ties NN/RM at 9-1 and there will be a coin flip tomorrow to determine the #1 seed in next weeks conference tournament. The #1 seed in the upcoming State playoffs will be determined by who ever finishes the highest in the conference tournament. Both will get byes in the Tuesday night quarter finals.
Jasmine Griffin and Jessica Lyons lead the offensive show for Northern but the real story here was the suffocating defense that the Lady Knights put on Rocky Mount and the struggled they had the entire game by the Lady Gryphons to get any offense going. J'Kyra Brown lead Rocky Mount with 17 and Marquita Hines scored 12 but Northern kept the Lady Gryphons offense disjointed the entire night.
Rocky Mount loses their first conference game and the first loss from someone not named South Central. Northern finishes up the regular season with only two losses and both to Rocky Mount.
The boys game there was this matter of second place to take care of in the Big East. Rocky Mount has a game lead on Northern but a Northern win and they take second on the tie breaker.
Northern jumped to an early 8-1 lead but two things happened and Rocky Mount got rolling. Tevin Taylor made four three pointers in the first half and Rocky Mount went to a full court zone press that aggravated the Knights every time Rocky Mount went into it and that was most of the first half. Even when Northern did get the ball across mid court them didn't have any offensive flow and Rocky Mount shot to their biggest lead of 58-41 before Northern made a push in the fourth quarter.
Terrell Hilliard who has become a scoring machine for Rocky Mount this week scored 16 and Tevin Taylor added 14 and Levon Brutus had ten for the Gryphons. Deshawn Freeman all world for Northern lead the way with 27 and he pulled down 12 rebounds.
Northern won the rebounding battle 40-37 and the turnovers were close 24-23 in favor of Northern.
In a moment of can you believe that, smack in the middle of the second quarter there was a disturbance on the top row of the jammed pack gym and people started scurring to get away from what everyone in the gym stood up because they thought a fight had broken out. Security which was high surrounded the area only to find out a rat had gotten loose on the top row and had every one in that area clearing out. It was a very humorous moment in the middle of a heated athletic contest between two arch rivals.
Rocky Mount by finishing second in the Big East has a bye until Wednesday and Northern plays Monday Night in the quarter finals.
