Staff report
West Rowan senior Tiara Thompson has been able to maintain her 25-point average for months.
Thompson has scored 628 points so far this season and will soon score her 1,400th point in three seasons with the Falcons.
She’s having one of the all-time seasons for the modern era of girls basketball and has led the Falcons to a 24-1 record.
South Rowan’s Janiya Downs scored a county record 839 points in the 2018-19 season. Salisbury’s Shayla Fields had three huge seasons with 835, 791 and 690. North Rowan’s Bailee Goodlett scored 793 points in 2022-23.
Thompson has scored more than twice as many points as any other girl in the county this season.
West Rowan plays Northwest Cabarrus in the South Piedmont Conference Tournament final on Friday at 6 p.m. That game will be played at Carson.
The next group of female scorers in the county is West’s Aubrey Martin (12.1), Carson’s Rylee Hedrick (11.3) and East freshman Bristol Smith. Hedrick and Smith missed the final weeks of the regular season. That hurt their teams quite a bit. North’s Zakiya Oglesby is fifth in county scoring at almost 10 per game.
Carson senior Julia Burleson was a recent addition to the 500 points club. She now has 543 for her career. She’s moved up to sixth in county scoring. Salisbury’s Gabbi Fatovic has picked up her scoring pace. She’s up to seventh in the county.
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Carson junior CP Perry still leads county boys in scoring, as he’s been able to stay steady at 20 points per game. He’s now scored 1,366 points for the Cougars, with 521 this season.
Salisbury senior Braylon Taylor and Carson junior Jacob Mills have been neck-and-neck in scoring most of the season. Both have played 26 games and both are closing in on 500 points. Taylor has scored two more points than Mills, but rounded to tenths the average for both is 18.8 points per game. Taylor is up to 1,331 points for his three varsity seasons, while Mills has scored 1,241 in three seasons as a Cougar.
North junior Carter Williams was a recent addition to the “700 Club” and now is up to 749 career points. He’s fourth in county scoring with 17 points per game.
It seems like North hasn’t played in forever, but the Cavaliers will return to action Thursday against Albemarle in the Yadkin Valley Conference semifinals being played at Pfeiffer. North had a first-round bye.
Carson will take on Robinson at 7:30 p.m. on Friday for the SPC Tournament championship. Carson will have the home floor for that one. Robinson blasted Concord in a Wednesday semifinal.
North freshman Jordan Massenburg is averaging 15 points a game and already has 300 career points. South freshman Anderson Pauley (224 points) and Salisbury freshman Royce Perkins (269) have missed a number of games with illness or injury, but both have established themselves as future 1,000-point scorers.
Salisbury senior Jon “JB” Ross missed all of his junior season and had limited games as a sophomore, but he reached 500 career points this week.
With the expanded playoffs (lots of 48-team brackets), just about everyone is going to get to play at least one playoff game.
