LITTLE ROCK — Top-ranked North Little Rock jumped out to a 17-2 lead less than five minutes into the game and cruised to a 69-47 victory over West Memphis at North Little Rock Arena.
Senior Thomas Alexander scored a game-high 23 points to lead three Charging Wildcats. Alexander scored 11 of his points in the first quarter, with four of them coming off dunks.
“That’s the style we want to play out of the blocks,” said North Little Rock Coach Johnny Rice, referring to the eight points scored in transition in the first four minutes of the game. “Our best offense is our defense. Everything else just seemed to flow off that.”
Alexander scored six consecutive points in a 13-0 Charging Wildcats run in the first quarter, including a dazzling dunk off an alley-oop pass from guard Dayshawn Watkins, who scored 17 points.
North Little Rock (13-1, 2- 0 7A/6A-East) led 20-5 at the end of the first quarter and held West Memphis to 7-of-19 shooting from the field in the first half. North Little Rock also owned the boards, outrebounding the Blue Devils (7-8, 0-2) 15-10 in the first half.
North Little Rock led 40-18 at halftime and eased off the pressure in the second half, although the Wildcats led 45-20 at one point in the third quarter.
“We played with a lot of energy in the first half and we put a lot of pressure on the ball,” Rice said. “That was one of our better first quarters of the season.”
Terrance Francis added 12 points for North Little Rock and Gary Vines had nine.
Senior guard Kelvin Mooney scored 13 points for West Memphis and junior Glen Burns had nine.
Sports, Pages 23 on 01/09/2013