The North Cross Raiders fought the good fight in their overtime match against the Roanoke Catholic Celtics on Friday but wound up with a less-than-desirable result. They fell just short of the Celtics by a score of 70-68. Despite running the score up even higher than they did in their prior game last Thursday (60), North Cross still had to take the loss.
Several Raiders players turned in solid performances despite ultimately coming up short. Perhaps the best among those players was Antonio Mack, who scored 28 points. That was a full 41.2% of North Cross' points, marking the 14th time in a row he's earned more than a third of the team's points. Jesiah Hines was another key contributor, scoring 23 points.
Even though they lost, North Cross smashed the offensive glass and finished the game with 16 offensive rebounds. They easily outclassed their opponents in that department as Roanoke Catholic only pulled down seven offensive rebounds.
Roanoke Catholic found their leader in underclassman Demarcus Brown, who scored 27 points along with seven rebounds. Brown has been hot recently, having posted 17 or more points the last three times he's played. The team also got some help courtesy of Marcus Pannell, who scored five points along with six assists and four steals.
North Cross' loss ended a three-game streak of away wins and brought them to 8-7. As for Roanoke Catholic, the win makes it two in a row for them and bumps their season record up to 3-10.
North Cross will head out on the road to take on the Dragons at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Stuart Hall will be looking to extend their current three-game winning streak. As for Roanoke Catholic, they will look to defend their home court on Monday against the Bobcats at 7:00 p.m. The matchup should be an exciting one, as these teams are closely ranked in Virginia (Radford is ranked 261st, while the Celtics are ranked 254th).
