Berry leads L. Highland
Henderson, Berry shine for Highlanders
WINTER PARK — The dynamic scoring duo of Joel Berry and Jay Henderson lifted Lake Highland Prep’s boys basketball team to a 91-67 victory against West Orange in the Rotary Tipoff Classic on Thursday night.
Berry, one of the nation’s top juniors, had 34 points and thrived in the up-tempocontest. Henderson, also a highly touted junior, added 25 points.
“Both teams like to play at a quick pace but we like to create tempo, get guys out in the open floor, especially Joel Berry, Jay Henderson, B.J. Simpson,” Lake Highland coach Jeff Turner said. “We think we have an advantage if we can get out and run.”
The Highlanders (3-0), ranked No. 2 in the Sentinel’s Super 16, advance to the tournament semifinals, where they will face Winter Park on Friday night. The Wildcats beat Lake Brantley 59-42 earlier in the evening.
Berry’s stellar performance fell short of his 49- point outing against West Orange in the final of last year’s Tipoff Classic, where he made a gamewinning shot to give Lake Highland an 85-83 victory.
West Orange’s Jay- R Perkins finished with 19 points and Will Richardson scored 18 points.
The Warriors (1-1) fell behind in the second quarter and were never able to close the gap to less than eight points in the second half.
Winter Park (3-0) will have its hands full against the run- and- gun Highlanders, although it proved it could play a high-paced game as well on Thursday.
The Wildcats implemented a full-court trap throughout the game to negate Lake Brantley’s size advantage.
It wasn’t always pretty, but the scrappy Wildcats successfully frustrated the Patriots (2-3).
“We didn’t want to get in a slow-down game because they were much bigger than we were,” Winter Park coach David Bailey said.
“The only choice we had was to speed it up a little bit.”
Senior Jay Wimbley led Winter Park with 17 points and junior Dewey Johnson added 13. Freshman John Mooney had 14 points for the Patriots.
The first game of the night featured No. 9 Oak Ridge (1-2), which avoided an 0-3 start to the year by defeating No. 11 Wekiva (1-3) 52-47. Marquel Willis’ 23 points paced the Pioneers, who will play in Saturday’s consolation final.