NLR gets rolling, knocks off Bryant

BRYANT — North Little Rock’s boys may not have started off Tuesday’s 7A-Central Conference game at Bryant the way it wanted to, but the Charging Wildcats finished just fine.

Sophomore forward Moses Moody scored 17 points and grabbed six rebounds as No. 4 North Little Rock used two game-changing runs in the second half to beat Bryant 55-37.

Junior forward Collin Moore had 6 points, 11 rebounds and 3 steals, and sophomore guard Spencer Simes added 13 points for the Charging Wildcats, who led 26-21 at halftime before using a 12-1 run in the third quarter to open up a 16-point lead. North Little Rock (15-4, 4-1) then went on a 9-0 spurt midway through the fourth quarter to essentially put Bryant away after the Hornets had pulled to within nine.

“We talk about it all the time, that the first three minutes of the second half are important,” North Little Rock Coach Johnny Rice said. “The start of the third quarter changed the whole momentum of the game for us because we’d got off to such a slow start. But Bryant had a lot to do with that.”

The Hornets did give the Charging Wildcats trouble over the first two quarters. Bryant (11-7, 2-3) used an aggressive zone defense to force North Little Rock into several rushed shots. The Charging Wildcats also found themselves in foul trouble because the Hornets guards relentlessly attacked the middle of the floor, which forced Rice to deviate from his usual rotation.

But the Charging Wildcats still managed to stay a step ahead, mainly because of the Hornets’ cold shooting. Bryant were 6 of 20 from the floor in the first half, including 2 of 10 in the second quarter.

“We couldn’t make shots,” Bryant Coach Mike Abrahamson said. “I thought we got a lot of looks that we like that we normally make more of. Maybe we were slightly out of rhythm, but you’ve got to credit North Little Rock’s defense for that.”

The Charging Wildcats turned up their defensive pressure in the third quarter and began getting open shots off dribble penetration. North Little Rock was 6 of 10 in the quarter and led 38-22 after Moore’s dunk. Bryant, in turn, hit just one of its nine shots and didn’t net its first field goal of the quarter until senior guard Sam Chumley hit a three-pointer with four seconds left.

The Hornets eventually got within 40-31 after back-to-back three-pointers by Chumley and sophomore guard Khalen Robinson, the latter with 6:51 left in the game. But the Charging Wildcats scored the next nine points, culminating with a 22-footer by Moody, to put Bryant in a hole it couldn’t get out of.

“I was happy with the way we finished,” Rice said. “Bryant attacked us in the fourth, but we were able to stretch it out some by making the right plays. Earlier in the year, we weren’t doing that consistently. But we did in this one, and I was tickled to death over that.”

“I was happy with the way we finished. Bryant attacked us in the fourth, but we were able to stretch it out some by making the right plays.” North Little Rock Coach Johnny Rice