Kinston's Bo Ingram drives to the basket as West Craven's Jaguar Crovell (30) defends as Bobby Cox (20) and Erik Highsmith (15) watch the play
Janet Sutton/ The Free Press
Kinston Battled Past West Craven
The scoreboard reflected that Kinston’s basketball team did what it was supposed to Tuesday, but its opponent didn’t go down without a fight.
Bo Ingram scored 23 points and Reggie Bullock scored 18 to propel the Vikings to a hard-earned 61-49 win over West Craven in the first round of the state 3A playoffs.
Kinston (23-4) advances to play host to Winterville South Central on Thursday at 7 p.m.
But moving on to the second round for the defending state runner-up was decidedly more difficult than most would’ve anticipated.
The top-seeded Vikings, who didn’t lose to an in-state school during the regular season, never led by more than 15 points. Kinston’s consistently less-than-comfortable lead was as small as four points in the second quarter, seven in the third and was trimmed to single digits as late as the 5:08 mark in the fourth.
And in a way, the Vikings’ coach was glad to see it.
“Along the way, you’re going to need to see games like this to really open your eyes up,” Kinston coach Wells Gulledge said. “And some of our guys that have been through it know, but there’s some other guys that were out there tonight on our team that have never been through this before. And now they know.”
Junior guard Erik Hightower scored 21 points, including six 3-pointers, to lead the upstart Eagles (10-17). West Craven coach Tony Pitts, a Kinston native and a former Gulledge assis-tant with the Vikings, said he was proud of his team’s showing against a heavy favorite.
“I think my kids came out and did a wonderful job and showed what we’re about and what we’re trying to do with our program,” he said. “It’s always a great opportunity to come back home to Kinston and play against Kinston High.”
Pitts used a sagging man-to-man defense to try to neutralize Bullock, a sophomore for-ward who’s already committed to North Carolina. But Ingram, a 6-foot-5-inch senior forward who said he has narrowed his college choices to East Carolina, Clemson and Charlotte, picked up the slack.
Ingram nailed four 3-pointers — all, seemingly, just when Kinston needed them — and drew four charges on defense.
“That’s huge,” Gulledge said. “That’s four team fouls that he picked up on the other team. That’s four turnovers, just him.
“He really laid his body out on the line for us tonight, so we’re very proud of the way he responded.”
The Vikings, led by 12 first-quarter points from Bullock, seemed destined to put a rubber stamp on the victory in the early going. They scored the game’s first eight points and jumped out to a 12-2 lead, but West Craven regrouped with a 9-2 run to pull to within four a little more than a minute into the second quarter.
“We came out pretty fired up, and they got on a roll, too,” Ingram said. “We just kind of laid down. We kind of got too confident about ourselves and then picked it up.”
And Gulledge hopes his younger players picked up a bit of knowledge that will serve them well during a run for a state title.
“When your back’s against the wall, nobody’s going to lay down,” Gulledge said. “And you’ve got to understand that right from the get-go. You can preach about it all you want to, but I think our kids learned a valuable lesson tonight that everybody was 0-0 walking into this game.”
It didn’t take long for the Eagles, who played this season with just two returning players, to start thinking about next season.
“I’m really looking forward to a lot of hard work in the offseason and getting my kids pre-pared to do what we need to do next year to come back and be more competitive,” Pitts said.
David Hall can be reached at (252) 559-1086 or at dhall@freedomenc.com.
