No. 4 North Meck rolls past Hopewell in Queen City championship game
North Mecklenburg boys’ basketball coach Duane Lewis wanted his team to be tested — but not too much.
“With the playoffs coming up, I wanted us to have to work for it,” Lewis said. “But I also wanted us to win the championship.”
Mission accomplished.
Hopewell, which stunned top-seeded Chambers in the semifinals, pushed Lewis’ team at times Friday night, but the second-seeded Vikings pulled away for a 76-52 victory at Mallard Creek High.
That made North Mecklenburg the Queen City 3A-4A Conference tournament champion and could set up the Vikings for a top-10 seed in the 4A state playoffs that begin Tuesday.
“We knew they wouldn’t lay down,” Lewis said of the fifth-seeded Titans (13-14), who also beat fourth seed Mallard Creek in the opening round of the tournament.
“But winning the championship is always exciting,” Lewis said. “Five or 10 years from now, you come back and can talk about being a champ.”
The game was tied at 7-7 midway through the first quarter, when North Mecklenburg (22-4) went on a 13-0 run. Hopewell never really threatened again.
But the Titans never gave up either. Several times in the second and third quarters, the Vikings threatened to blow it open, but Hopewell rallied and narrowed the gap.
In the end, North Mecklenburg couldn’t be caught. The Vikings shot 56 percent from the floor (29-of-52), piled up a 27-19 rebounding edge, and committed only seven turnovers — and just one in the first half.
North Mecklenburg put five players in double figures, led by Maxwell Coles with 20 points. Anthony Moore led Hopewell with 19.
The game got a bit chippy near the end, and the Vikings’ Jordan Crawford and the Titans’ Travis Horne were ejected after receiving technical fouls.
Crawford, who scored 13 points in the first quarter and finished with 14, was named the tournament’s most valuable player. The rest of the all-tournament team was made up of North Mecklenburg’s Isaiah Evans and Maxwell Coles and Hopewell’s Moore and Derrick Eley.
Now Lewis and the Vikings turn their attention to the state playoffs.
“From now on, anything can happen,” he said. “We’ve progressed as a team. I like where we’re at. But we’ve got to concentrate on one game at a time – just worry about the next game. It’s a matter now of winning and moving on.”
