Photo by Carly Williams
Two minutes and ten seconds.
For the past three years, the Person Rockets have been the ones asking questions and the Orange Panthers were stuck trying to answer them. Too often, the Rockets size, speed, range and experience would riddle the Panthers into submission.
Until late on Friday night when Orange found the answer….which was two minutes and ten seconds.
A possession that Orange may have never had before and, with a shot clock inevitably on the horizon in North Carolina high school basketball, may never have again. But it led to the Panthers’ first win over Person since 2014.
Orange led 60-56 with 2:43 remaining in regulation when coach Derryl Britt called timeout. Up to that point, Orange and Person had played at a consistent pace which led to sloppiness as the stakes got higher and the minutes fading away. Orange’s Xandrell Pennix had just thrown the ball away that was stolen by Person’s DaeJon Hodge, who immediately turned it right back over when he threw a pass to Lance Clarke that went to the Orange cheerleaders instead.
Britt preached patience to his team in the huddle.
“I told them they weren’t expecting us to run clock here,” Britt said. “And we’re not going to help them by forcing our offense.”
So Kai Wade, Coleman Cloer, Freddy Sneed, Pennix and Malachi Poole (who substituted in for center Ryan Honeycutt) succeeded in gradually taking the life out of Person’s chances. When Orange started the possession, Person’s top scorer, Lance Clarke, had two fouls. Then he picked up his third and fourth fouls defending Cloer.
With 1:18 remaining, Pennix threw a pass out of the right corner to Cloer, who hit Wade on the wing. Wade found an opening in the paint, but stumbled over Clarke’s foot. The whistle and foul on Clarke was his fifth.
And with that, Britt’s plan to suck the life out of the Rockets worked to perfection.
Person simply didn’t have another offensive weapon to rely on and didn’t score in the final 3:43 aside from a meaningless field goal from Hodge in the waning seconds. Cloer drained three key free throws as Orange won 63-58.
Cloer led Orange with 27 points. But the X-factor, pardon the pun, was Xandrell Pennix, who scored 17 points off 5-of-12 shooting from 3-point range. It was the first time in five career games against Person that Pennix finished in double-figures.
Wade finished with eleven points and nine assists.
Clarke led Person with 22 points off 5-of-9 shooting from 3-point range. Hodge was the only other Rocket in double-figures with 12 points.
The win kept Orange tied with Eastern Alamance for first place in the loss column in the Central Conference at 5-0. Person (9-5, 0-3) dropped its fourth straight.
Any Orange win over Person comes the hard way. Friday night was no different. After Orange took home wire-to-wire wins in its opening three games of 2024, they never led in the first half. Person stormed out to a 10-3 lead, behind three-pointers from Clarke and Jordan Lunsford. Pennix drained his first three-pointer off a pass from Cloer, but the Rockets’ C.J. Hunt canceled that out with his own shot from downtown that kicked around the iron three times before dropping in, leading to plenty of rolling eyes along the Orange bench.
The Rockets extended its lead to 26-16 following a three-pointer from Quante Bowman, his only field goal, with 5;57 remaining in the second quarter. Wade started a late Orange run with his own basket from beyond the arc, then moved the Panthers to 26-23 after a lay-in. Clarke and Hodge each sank shots in the final minute of the first half to send Person to the locker room with a 35-30 lead.
Clark and Lunsford extended Person’s lead to 39-30 to open the second half, but Orange’s defense settled in for the remainder of the game. Person hit six 3-pointers in the first half, but were limited to only two in the second.
Cloer went on a personal 7-0 run to move the Panthers within 39-37. After consecutive 3-pointers from Pennix, Cloer hit a free-throw with 2:07 remaining in the third quarter to tie the game for the first time. Following a free throw by Bowman, Wade stole the ball from Hodge and fed Cloer down the floor, who flushed the ball down with one-hand to give the Panthers its first lead of the game.
The game was tied 48-48 going into the fourth quarter. Cloer opened the frame with a 20-footer where he wound up on his back. Person’s Lamont Johnson came back with a stickleback field goal, but Pennix responded with another three-pointer. Clark came back with his own trey, followed by a lay-in from Lunsford to give the Rockets the lead by one.
Pennix drained another big shot off a pass from Cloer to put Orange ahead 57-55, and the Rockets went the subsequent 5:31 without a field goal.
Orange’s last home win over Person was on December 4, 2013, though Person has played inside Panthers Gymnasium only three times since then.