THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, December 29, 1994 TAG: 9412290561
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DENISE MICHAUX, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
Basketball bragging rights in the city of Suffolk won't be decided until January 10.
With the Bay Rivers District's second-leading scorer - Lakeland's Sebastian Yates - still recovering from pnemonia, Greensville edged a cold-shooting Lakeland team, 58-56 and denied the Cavaliers the chance to play Nansemond River tonight in the championship game of the Lakeland Christmas tournament.
The Warriors and Cavaliers play January 10 in their first regular season meeting.
``I wanted to play in the championship game,'' Lakeland head coach John Fuller said. ``We've got to play them two more times, the fact that it would have been Nansemond River (in the final) didn't make it any more special.''
``We already know we are better,'' Nansemond River's James Parker said. ``I'm sorry we couldn't be playing them, but we'll do what we can against Greensville.''
Nansemond River downed Wilson, 89-63, in the early game. Lakeland and Wilson will meet in the consolation final at 6:30 and Nansemond River will face Greensville at 8:30 at Lakeland High School.
Yates, who was averaging 25 points per game, developed pneumonia last week before the Cavaliers were preparing to travel to Greensville. The end result was a 72-46 loss. Yates practiced for the first time on Tuesday and wasn't even close to 100 percent on Wednesday night. But Lakeland's Fuller wanted to get him in the game to spark some points.
``I didn't want to have to play him at all. I didn't know how long he could go,'' Fuller said. ``He could only go a couple of minutes at a time.''
With less than 30 seconds to play Damon Tillery stole the ball from the Eagles and nailed a jumper to cut Greensville's lead to 53-52.
But back-to-back fouls on Tillery and Antoine Riddick sent Greensville's leading scorer, Lester Ealey, to the line, where he was 3-of-4. After Yates sank a pair of free throws with 11 seconds remaining, Ealey closed the door with a layup to make it 58-54 with 7 seconds left and rendered Riddick's jumper at the buzzer meaningless.
``We could never get the lead,'' Fuller said. ``Being as young as we are we rushed it at the end and gave up three turnovers in a row.''
It didn't help that the Cavaliers (3-3) had to rebound from a two-point first quarter. Tillery scored with 16 seconds left in the period to make it 13-2 at the end of one.
``Don't ask me. I don't know what happened,'' Fuller said. ``We got the shots we should have, they just didn't fall.''
The Cavaliers outscored the Eagles 14-12 in the second period to go into the locker room down 25-16.
But Brian Baker opened the second half with a pair of treys and all of a sudden Lakeland was back in the game.
The Cavaliers managed to tie the game at 37 early in the final period, but that was as close as they could get to the lead.
Tillery paced Lakeland with 13 points and Baker added 12, including three three-pointers. Freshman Herman Knight filled in for Yates and tallied nine points and 16 rebounds.
Ealey and Michael Stokes paced the Eagles with 13 and 12 points respectively.
In Nansemond River's early game, sophomore guard Antoine Willie had as many points at halftime (25) as Wilson did.
Willie totaled 40 points for the game and Montorian Valentine added 18.
Willie scored 13 of the Warriors 21 first period points off 13 Wilson turnovers to give Nansemond River a 21-6 edge.
Perez Bottoms scored 10 of his 19 points in the third period to try to boost the Presidents, but they could only narrow the score to 66-50 early in the fourth quarter.
Darius Edwards added 16 points for Wilson, which has yet to win a game. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MICHAEL KESTNER/
Wilson's Darius Edwards, center, looks for room as Nansemond River's
Maurice Fofana, left, and Reginald Holliman close in.
by CNB