Chargers force 30 turnovers in rivalry win over Jets

Posted

SILER CITY — If you watch, read or hear about Northwood basketball this season, it’ll be nearly impossible to avoid the terms “size” and “length.”

The Chargers have an abundance of it.

But despite the massive height advantage that Northwood had against Jordan-Matthews last Wednesday night, the Jets looked neither scared nor intimidated, competing with the Chargers in the paint all the way to the final buzzer.

The game may have ended with Northwood securing a bounce-back 62-37 win after a loss to Wakefield the night before, but the 25-point difference was hardly representative of the contest’s hard-fought, scrappy nature.

“(We) did a really good job, I thought, of getting in there and battling and rebounding with their big boys, which is really tough,” Rodney Wiley, the Jets’ head coach, said after the loss. “Those guys are big. You don’t know 6-foot-8 until you stand up beside of it.”

The Chargers’ starting five against the Jets had an average height of 6-foot-4, including the 6-foot-6 sophomore phenom guard Drake Powell and the 6-foot-8 junior transfer Max Frazier.

Yet, the Chargers collected just six more rebounds than the Jets — 31 to J-M’s 25 — and didn’t cause as much trouble for their opponents in the paint as the size differential would have you believe.

At one point in the second quarter, Jets senior Rayshawn Alston and junior Aiden Harrison double-teamed Frazier in the paint, just underneath the basket, and forced a turnover as they pushed him toward the baseline.

Plays like that, along with a couple of awe-striking post moves by Alston and sophomore Kelton Fuquay in the first half, were enough evidence that the Jets came prepared for the Chargers’ size.

That wasn’t going to be the key for Northwood to shut down their cross-county rival.

“They weren’t really able to impose their will, but they tried,” Wiley said. “They missed some shots (in the paint) … We played hard, though. They left everything they had on the floor.”

“We’ve got to start hitting layups,” Matt Brown, the Chargers’ head coach, said after the win. “I think maybe we hit one layup tonight. We’ve got to do a lot better, using our size to our advantage. We’ll fix that.”

Instead, it was Northwood’s length, speed and defensive commitment that made all the difference. That is the Chargers’ brand, after all.

The Jets turned the ball over 30 times on the night, succumbing to Northwood’s length as the Chargers’ long arms and athleticism made it difficult for them to find clear passing lanes and run their offense as efficiently as Wiley would’ve liked.

“(We need to) be a little bit more disciplined on offense and running our offense,” Wiley said. “I thought Northwood pushed us away from our basket, pushed our offense further out and that took us out of our offensive flow that we wanted to run tonight.

“With that length,” Wiley added, “it’s hard.”

The Chargers’ defense not only forced 30 turnovers, but also held the Jets to two quarters with single-digit points and racked up five blocks in the process.

They may not have held J-M to 35 points — Brown’s magic number — but they were just about as close as you can get.

Brown praised the Chargers’ aggressiveness, primarily on the defensive end, after the game, citing a few players’ high foul counts — including 6-foot-11 junior Kenan Parrish (4 fouls) and freshman Gus Ritchey (5 fouls, fouled out) — as a developmental victory.

“I’d probably give (the game ball) to Kenan because we’ve been telling him that he needs to be more aggressive, be more assertive on the offensive and defensive ends,” Brown said, “and he got four fouls, which I’m happy about. … That deserves a game ball because we’ve been stressing it. In order for us to be successful, he has to be successful, too.”

Northwood was led by the sophomore duo of guards Drake Powell (12 points, 5 rebounds, 1 block) and Fred Whitaker Jr. (9 points, 4 rebounds, 1 block), both of which hold the key to their team’s success in the palms of their hands.

Whitaker, the team’s floor general, is learning to become a leader on a squad that has just one senior and four juniors.

He may not be there yet, but Brown seems to have full confidence that he’ll become more vocal as the season progresses.

“(The leadership) is still being developed,” Brown said. “Fred Whitaker is becoming a leader on the floor and off the floor as our point guard and as the guy who wears the No. 0 jersey, that’s a big deal to us. … We’ve got to do a better job of having some sort of leadership. When we have days like this and days like last night (against Wakefield), we’ve got to have somebody step up and talk.”

Early in the game, the Chargers’ established their defensive presence, forcing six turnovers and capitalizing on a couple of them to take a 17-6 lead at the end of the first period.

“We turned the ball over in the first quarter and they knocked down some threes and we missed some open shots,” Wiley said. “The game started slipping away from us right in there.”

While the Jets had a much better offensive showing in the second quarter, turnovers continued to be an issue, with J-M coughing the ball up 10 times in the second period.

The Jets were able to cut the deficit to six points, 23-16, with just under three minutes to play in the second, but a mid-range jumper from Whitaker sparked an 11-1 Northwood run that bled into the third quarter.

At halftime, the Chargers had a 30-17 lead that’d only grow from there.

Northwood got into its groove early in the third, scoring its first three field goals in the paint, including a tip-in bucket from Frazier made possible by his length to put the Chargers up by 16 points, 36-20.

The Chargers played most of the fourth quarter using their reserves, a decision that Brown chalked up to rest since they were slated to play their third game in five days against Orange on Saturday — which they won, 64-48.

While it wasn’t the cleanest game of the season for the Chargers — they had 16 turnovers of their own and didn’t shoot the ball too well — it was a tough rivalry victory that allowed them to bounce back from the 48-40 loss to Wakefield the night before.

Northwood (3-1) is set to take the floor again on Tuesday against Chapel Hill (0-4) and then face East Chapel Hill (1-2) on Thursday before the rematch with Jordan-Matthews on Saturday.

“I think we’re in a good spot,” Brown said. “I think that we competed last night against a really, really good Wakefield team, so I think we’re going to be O.K. going into conference play and hopefully the playoffs. … I like our team, I like the makeup of our team, I like that the kids work hard. They want to do good.”

The Jets (0-3) have North Moore (2-1) on tap for Monday and Union Pines (5-0) on Friday before heading to Pittsboro on Saturday, where we’ll see the latest installment of one of Chatham’s best rivalries.

Reporter Victor Hensley can be reached at vhensley@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @Frezeal33.