Basketball Game Preview: Mount Pleasant Tigers vs. Porter Ridge Pirates

The Mount Pleasant Tigers will take on the Porter Ridge Pirates in a holiday battle at at 6:00 p.m. on Friday. Both come into the match bolstered by wins in their previous matches.

Mount Pleasant will bounce into Friday's game after beating South Rowan, who they had gone 0-3 against in their three prior meetings. Mount Pleasant sure made it a nail-biter, but they managed to escape with a 36-33 victory over South Rowan last Wednesday. While the Tigers didn't have the best season last year (they finished 11-15), it's starting to look like those struggles are a thing of the past.

Meanwhile, Porter Ridge had already won five in a row (a stretch where they outscored their opponents by an average of 12.4 points) and they went ahead and made it six on Wednesday. They walked away with a 44-37 win over the Trojans. Given the Pirates' advantage in MaxPreps' North Carolina basketball rankings (they are ranked 55th, while the Trojans are ranked 306th), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.

Porter Ridge pushed their record up to 9-1 with the victory, which was their third straight on the road. As for Mount Pleasant, they are on a roll lately: they've won three of their last four contests, which provided a nice bump to their 5-2 record this season.