Millbrook’s Jalen McCoy overcomes a slow first half to score 30 against Hillside
Basketball matchups like this usually don’t happen until the playoffs.
At the HSOT Garner Showcase on Monday, Hillside and Millbrook played in what could be a foreshadow of a 4A postseason showdown of Raleigh vs. Durham.
The first half played out like one would expect from two teams with a combined 29 wins and two losses.
The game was tied eight times in the first 16 minutes. . Millrook’s Eric van der Heijden and Hillside’s Trey Crews traded 3s to end the second quarter to tie the game at 36 at the half.
The win at Garner High School, though, went to Millbrook, as the Wildcats went on a 13-0 run late in the third quarter to beat the Hornets 86-70.
“We tightened some things up defensively,” Millbrook coach Chris Davis said after the game. “They were getting easy shots in the first half. They (Hillside) were playing really hard and our intensity wasn’t there. I just thought in the second half we made a couple of adjustments and our defense got better.”
Millbrook improves to 17-1 overall while Hillside falls to 13-2. The Hornets came into the contest on a 12-game winning streak and were a stretch away from picking up their 14th win of the season.
Millbrook’s Jalen McCoy takes control
Hillside’s last lead came early in the third quarter when Dr’ake Thompson scored five points in a row, putting the Hornets up 40-36. That’s when the Wildcats, led by senior guard Jalen McCoy, went on a run.
McCoy scored 12 of his game-high 30 points in the third quarter and four points during the 13-0 run. Will Felton also had five during that run. Felton finished with 27 points and seven rebounds. That duo went a combined 25-31 from the field for the Wildcats.
“Coach told us to keep playing hard,” McCoy said. “My teammates and coaches told me to keep playing, even though I had a slow first half. Just to keep working and it would come to me.”
The Hornets owned the biggest lead of the half (21-16).
Crews was a handful for the Wildcats, scoring 27 points, one of three players in double figures for the Hornets. Thompson finished with 19, while Elijah Thomas had 10.
Van der Heijden got going late and finished with 10 for the Wildcats.
A March rematch?
In the fourth quarter, Millbrook outscored Hillside 26-18. During one stretch, the Hornets missed six in a row from the floor after pulling to within seven.
“Millbrook, obviously, is a really good team,” Hillside coach Rashard Lee-Worthy said. “What they did the last six minutes kind of showed the team that they are.”
Millbrook outscored the Hornets 11-3 in the final few minutes to win by 16.
“We had to put a body on them,” Lee-Worthy said. “Those guys are big, instead of trying to jump with them we were going into their body to try to keep them off the boards the best we could. The third quarter we had a slight lead and left our fundamentals of pushing (them) away like we had done all game.”
Both teams will return to conference play this week. The Hornets, 7-0 in the Triangle-8 Conference, host Athens Drive on Friday. Millbrook, 7-0 in the CAP-7, will take on Enloe Friday.
If both teams stay the course, this could be a rematch fans see in March.
“It was good for our team to play against a school that’s ranked so highly,” Lee-Worthy said. “To play somebody ranked above us to let them see you can play against these kids and survive. It was good for our guys to see we can’t make as many mistakes against the top teams.”
This story was originally published January 20, 2020 at 6:05 PM with the headline "Millbrook’s Jalen McCoy overcomes a slow first half to score 30 against Hillside."
