Titans tower over North girls

Thu. February 16, 2012 at 10:40 p.m. | By Jason Queen

PFAFFTOWN | Beating West Forsyth in the semifinals of the Central Piedmont Conference tournament looked like an uphill climb for North Davidson’s girls Thursday night.

Way uphill.

Led by twin 6-foot sophomores Jessica and Jazmine Jones, the Titans dominated the paint on both ends of the floor and eased to a 53-24 victory over the Knights at Reagan High School. West, the CPC’s No. 2 seed, will face top seed Mount Tabor, a 57-42 winner over Reagan, in the tournament title game at 6 p.m. Friday. North, the league’s No. 3 seed, will open the 4-A state playoffs on Monday — the pairings will be announced sometime Saturday.

The Knights will certainly hope to face a team a little more its own size in the playoffs. Jazmine Jones led the Titans with 12 points and Jessica Jones added nine, and the bulk of those were from point-blank range on second-chance opportunities after offensive rebounds. “Pretty much their whole team, they’re loaded,” North coach Kendra Puckett said. “They’re just a tough team all-around to play against.

“They got a lot of second chances, and we didn’t hardly get any first chances.”

Jazmine Jones and slasher Tori Cook got the Titans going early. Cook scored on a baseline drive, and followed that up with a move in the post. Jazmine Jones then scored three stickbacks around a basket by Deumbi Egbuna, who took a beautiful feed from Tatyana Perez on dribble penetration. Just like that, the Titans led 12-2 and the Knights were befuddled.

“In every game we’ve played against them, we usually get some easy transition buckets and layups,” West coach LaQuanda Quick said. “We can get it into the paint pretty easily, and we always want to work inside-out.”

That trend continued into the second quarter, when the Titans opened the period on a 9-0 run to make it 22-4 with four minutes left in the half. Cook, who finished with 10 points, cut backdoor for a layup, then Tatum Jarvis — yet another tall, lanky post player — found her way inside for back-to-back buckets.

Ivy Kiker temporarily slowed things down for North with a drive to the bucket followed by a 3-pointer, but Jarvis countered with a three-point play and Jazmine Jones scored on consecutive trips to make it 29-11 at the half.

Despite the large deficit, the Knights fought hard to the end. “They played hard the whole game, so I’m proud of them for that,” Puckett added.

Taylor Darrow and Sydney Bryan led the Knights with seven points apiece.

Jason Queen can be reached at 249-3981, ext. 220 or jason.queen@the-dispatch.com.