Once Little Rock Hall broke down Lake Hamilton's patient offense, junior guard Dayton Artis took care of the rest in a 52-43 6A-South victory Tuesday night at George Cirks Arena in Little Rock.
Artis scored eight of his game-high 23 points in a quick second-quarter start that helped the Warriors (14-6, 5-1) take control of the game. Lake Hamilton (14-5, 4-2) led 11-7 after one quarter, but Artis sparked the 13-2 run that proved to be the undoing of the Wolves.
"We knew they had a couple of kids capable of shooting the ball well," Lake Hamilton Coach Scotty Pennington said. "We were going to play them straight up and if someone got hot we were going to shade to them. We just didn't do a very good job of shading on [Artis]. He got loose quite a bit tonight."
Artis scored 16 points in the second and third quarters as the Warriors took the upper-hand.
The Warriors came out of the second quarter with a 23-15 lead that would have been more if not for five turnovers. They hit 6 of 9 shots in the quarter and held the Wolves to 1-of-6 shooting and four points in the period.
"We were trying to play a fast-paced game,'' Warriors Coach Jon Coleman said. "We thought from looking at tape on them they were a patient, smart basketball team, so we wanted to kind of forced the tempo and try to make them do things they weren't used to doing."
Coleman credited 6-5 Issac Beal, who came off the bench and helped the Wolves hold their own inside.
" I thought he did a phenomenal job as far as changing shots and rebounding," Coleman said. "A lot of times we were able to give them one shot at it, and that helped."
Lake Hamilton had just 13 shots in the first half while the Warriors had six offensive rebounds in the half.
Hall led 23-15 at halftime and 37-24 with one quarter remaining.
Lake Hamilton pulled as close as 38-30 with 4:47 left but never threatened beyond that.
Eric Daily added 11 points for Hall and Robert Verges nine.
Lake Hamilton was led by Samuel Scott with 13, Jason Burks with 11 and Quinn Gibson with 10.
Sports on 01/28/2015