In advance of the arrival of Friday morning’s expected major snowfall, experts were advising preparedness and patience.
Twelve hours earlier, the Liberty Christian Bulldogs brought that same strategy to the Jim Muscaro gym on the North Cross campus.
Controlling the tempo from the outset, Liberty Christian rolled out to a sixteen point halftime lead, then held off a fourth quarter Raider run before pulling away for the 54-38 win over the Raiders.
“We’ve seen just about everything this year from opponents,” LCA head coach Wade Mawdesley noted after the victory. “We wanted to be patient tonight and work the ball to get a good shot. It was important to control the tempo. Everything starts on defense and I thought we won the game on the defensive side.”
“We had the one bad stretch in the fourth quarter where we missed wide open shots, missed free throws and had a couple turnovers. But, we were able to recover on the defensive side to get the win.”
Liberty’s patience and passing around the perimeter kept North Cross out of sync, and kept the Raiders from getting their running game in gear.
The Bulldogs scored the first 8 points of the game and North Cross was forced to play catch up the rest of the night. LCA led 14-6 after one quarter and pushed their advantage to 31-15 at the halftime break.
The Raiders cut the Bulldog lead to eight points in the third quarter, but still trailed 37-27 heading to the final frame.
North Cross went to a 1-3-1 defense in the fourth quarter and began chipping away at the Bulldog lead that had reached 13 points.
Sophomore James Nworah’s old fashion 3-point play cut the LCA lead to 42-32, and senior Jordan Lowery’s runner with 3:07 left in the game cut the Bulldog lead to 42-36. Seven seconds later Liberty senior point guard Jared Jauch missed the front end of a one-and-one that gave North Cross a chance to make things interesting.
But, the Raiders saw three straight put-backs from the paint roll off the rim on their next possession, then missed both ends of a two shot foul that allowed Liberty Christian to push the lead back to 10 when Joshua Saunders and Jauch each hit both ends of the bonus from the charity stripe to make it 46-36.
Liberty Christian finished things off with an 8-2 run, capped of by four straight free throws by junior Jay Barber.
“Liberty Christian is a good team and they controlled the tempo the whole game,” North Cross head coach Ed Green noted in the Raider locker room afterward. “Early in the game we gave them the ball 6 times on turnovers and our decisions were the worst they’ve been all year. We were down 16 and forced some turnovers to cut it to six, and we had the ball. But, it just wasn’t enough.”
Lowery had a team-high 12 points for North Cross, with Nworah adding 10 for the Raiders.
LCA had four players in double digits, with senior Blake Nelson leading with a game-high 16. Senior Chris Woolridge followed with 12, while Saunders and Barber each netted 10 points for the Bulldogs.
Bill Turner
