Panthers hold off late push by Red Devils

MOUNTAIN PINE — Despite a tremendous comeback and great effort by Mountain Pine Friday night, Magnet Cove took a 58-38 win over the Red Devils.

The Panthers (5-4, 2-1 2A-7) held the upper hand throughout the opening half of play to take a 30-14 lead heading to the break. The Red Devils (2-4, 1-1 2A-7) shot out in the second half with good defensive pressure off the press, while beginning to get hot shooting as senior Reydyn Dexter hit key 3-pointers down the stretch.

“We’re a team, that we’re not going to quit,” Mountain Pine head coach LaMont Page said. “No matter how much we’re down, we know we’re a better team when we play. You know, we had one practice (Thursday), and that’s the first time we have had with the whole team. So we had three starters out. … Once we get everybody here, then we can get some practice time in and I think that will make a difference.

“Right now, it’s just trying to piece everything together with COVID, the injures and everything. So it’s just hard to get in the rhythm. But I just told them, ‘Hey, just keep fighting. If we keep fighting, good things will happen.’ Once we start rebounding a

little better and stop making mistakes, then we’ll start coming back then.”

Trailing 34-23 heading to the fourth quarter, Red Devils Nathan Wetherington and Levi Horton kept Mountain Pine on pace with the Panthers, but the Panthers held on to take the win.

While pleased with the win, Magnet Cove head coach Matt Williamson said they had too many careless turnovers in the game.

“We started fixing that a little bit to where we finally got to doing a lot better,” he said. “But just utilizing our size — we’ve got so much size inside. And we have shooters as well, we just haven’t got to that yet. … If we don’t just make careless turnovers and we rebound the ball — and we rebounded really well. Defense, I thought, was the key for us tonight. I mean, our defense was tenacious. So if we can do that then we’ll be tough to beat.”

Of the Panthers’ solid ball movement in the game, Williamson said it was very important in the win.

“You know, we wanted to limit them to one shot and just work our offense and get it inside. … I don’t know who all hit 3s tonight, but that kind of helped loosen it up a little bit. … The guys did their job tonight and played to their strengths, and that really helped us.”

The Panthers jumped to a 14-7 lead by the end of the first quarter before they started spreading their advantage with solid shooting.

Wetherington led the Panthers with 15 points, three rebounds and a steal while Horton tallied

14 points, three rebounds and two blocks. Owen Tillery had 12 points, four rebounds, two assists and a steal, Kadin Baker had 4 points and three rebounds and Evin Ashcraft had 3 points with two rebounds. Kevin Endsley and Jace Beckwith each added 2 points in the win.

Brady Jones led Mountain Pine with 11 points, four rebounds, four blocks and a steal. Trey Zander had 7 points and two rebounds, Dexter had

5 points, two rebounds and a steal, and Keelan Dobbins added 3 points, two rebounds and a block. Isaiah Miles and Jayden Walker rounded out the scoring with 2 points apiece.