The Pelham Hornets had already won five in a row (a stretch where they outscored their opponents by an average of 24.6 points), and they went ahead and made it six on Friday. They walked away with a 51-40 win over Irwin County. Given Pelham's advantage in MaxPreps' Georgia basketball rankings (they are ranked 227th, while Irwin County is ranked 501st), the result wasn't entirely unexpected.
Pelham's success was the result of a balanced attack that saw several players step up, but Sariyah Chester led the charge by scoring 15 points along with six rebounds and two steals. The team also got some help courtesy of Jaliyah Crump, who scored 12 points along with three steals.
Despite the loss, Irwin County still got an impressive performance from Aaliyah Austin, who scored 22 points along with seven rebounds and three blocks. That was a full 55% of Irwin County's points, marking the fourth time in a row she's earned more than a third of the team's points. Another player making a difference was Brooklyn Gordon, who scored six points along with 15 rebounds and three steals.
Even though they lost, Irwin County smashed the offensive glass and finished the game with 23 offensive rebounds. This was only their 19th loss (out of 19 games) when they hit their own glass that hard.
Pelham is on a roll lately: they've won seven of their last nine games, which provided a nice bump to their 14-6 record this season. As for Irwin County, they still haven't won a game yet this season and fell to 0-23.
Pelham will take on Bacon County at 4:00 p.m. on Thursday. Hopefully Pelham focused on turnovers this week since the team gave up nine on Friday. As for Irwin County, they and Brooks County will face off at 6:00 p.m. on February 10th without much rest after finishing up games yesterday. Irwin County is coming into the contest with 21 straight losses on the road, meaning Brooks County will have to defend against a team hungry for a win.
Article generated by infoSentience based on data entered on MaxPreps
