NLR boys return to pick up victory

BOYS NORTH LITTLE ROCK 53, BENTONVILLE 51

Court time has been minimal for North Little Rock as of late, but Coach Johnny Rice said Bentonville gave his team what it needed at Charging Wildcat Arena on Tuesday.

Senior guard D.J. Smith scored 15 points as North Little Rock withstood a pair of potential game-winning shots to escape with a 53-51 victory.

Tracy Steele, also a senior, finished with 12 points and 3 steals, and sophomore center Kel’el Ware had 6 points, 12 rebounds and 5 blocks for the Charging Wildcats (3-0), who hadn’t played since beating Little Rock Parkview 72-57 on Nov. 21.

That month-long hiatus slowed down North Little Rock’s progression, Rice said, but he noted that facing a team like the Tigers helped his team get back into a gamelike flow quickly.

“They made you fight and claw on every possession,” he said of Bentonville. “They’re experienced guys that can play. If you don’t play defense every second, then they’re going to exploit you. They exploited us on certain stuff that we’ve got to work on.

“But I was proud that we fought, clawed and played hard. I was very encouraged by that.”

Sophomore guard Jaylen Lee had 18 points and junior forward Williams Hicks followed with 12 points for Bentonville (5-1), which had won its previous five games. The Tigers led by as many as eight points in the first quarter and put themselves in position to steal one on the road after trailing for much of the fourth quarter.

Bentonville knocked down five three-pointers in the first half, with Hicks and Lee hitting two apiece, to keep the Tigers ahead until a floater from Steele with 1:23 left in the second quarter ignited an 8-2 rally that allowed North Little Rock to take a 29-27 lead at halftime.

The Charging Wildcats pushed their lead to 35-29 midway through the third quarter after a dunk from Ware, but that’s as big as North Little Rock’s advantage would get.

The Tigers trailed 43-39 early in the fourth quarter when consecutive three- pointers from Hicks and junior forward Abel Hutchinson gave them a 45-43 advantage. North Little Rock answered with a 9-3 spurt to regain the lead, yet had to stave off a final run.

Hutchinson hit a pair of free throws to cut the Charging Wildcats’ lead to 52-50 with less than a minute left in the game. Bentonville missed a two-shot foul with 37.4 ticks to go but drew to within 52-51 on a Lee free throw nine seconds later.

After North Little Rock senior guard Kareame Cotton knocked down one of two free throws with 20 seconds remaining, Lee came up just short on a three-pointer on the ensuing trip for Bentonville. The Tigers managed to chase down the rebound but had a potential game-tying shot blocked by Charging Wildcats senior forward Ubong Etim at the buzzer.

“I think on the defensive end, the ball-screen coverages … we’ve got to get better at that,” Rice said. “A couple of times we got caught when we didn’t have our best defensive group in there. But I had no expectations [coming in] other than to make sure they played hard. And I think we did that.”