Kings Mountain using recent playoff failures as motivation

Big South 3A champion Mountaineers are No. 7 seed and will host Piedmont on Tuesday

Richard Walker Gazette staff JRWalk22

KINGS MOUNTAIN – For two straight seasons, Cox Mill has ended Kings Mountain High’s basketball season in the third round of the N.C. 3A playoffs.

As a No. 7 seed, the Mountaineers can’t meet Cox Mill’s top-seeded defending state champions until the Western N.C. 3A finals.

But that doesn’t mean the Chargers that feature two of the top players in the state, junior forward Wendell Moore and senior guard (and University of North Carolina recruit) Rechon Black, aren’t on the minds of Kings Mountain’s players and team.

“We talked all season in our practices about them,” Mountaineers coach Grayson Pierce said. “When things don’t go right in practice, we say, ‘Is this effort good enough to beat Cox Mill?’ So they are a very big motivator for us.”

Kings Mountain (22-5), which hosts Piedmont (16-9) on Tuesday night at Parker Gymnasium in the first round, played and lost to Cox Mill 68-60 on the road in a Dec. 1 marquee non-league regular season game. That comes after the Chargers eliminated Kings Mountain 76-59 in the 2016 playoffs and 78-41 in last year’s playoffs.

“We’ve already played them one time this season,” Pierce said. “And we were right there in the thick of things. So when we play our best, we’ve shown we can play with anybody in the state of North Carolina.”

That’s certainly been the case much of the year as the Mountaineers rolled through the Big South 3A regular season with a 13-1 record, then won three straight tournament games capped by Friday’s 72-64 title game home win over Hunter Huss.

However, the league loss – 64-62 at North Gaston in late January – has movitated Kings Mountain’s current eight-game winning streak.

“It left a nasty taste in our mouths,” said senior leading scorer Adrian Delph, an Appalachian State recruit. “We didn’t like it at all. We felt we should’ve been unbeaten in the conference.”

Led by Delph (26.8 points, 10.7 rebounds, 6.2 assists), junior Zeke Littlejohn (16.7 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.1 assists), junior Eli Paysour (15.1 points, 7.3 rebounds, 2.1 assists) and freshman Kobe Paysour (7.2 points, 4.5 rebounds, 3.5 assists), the Mountaineers will be a formidable foe for whomever they may face in the postseason – including Cox Mill.

“We’ve been preparing for this the whole season,” Delph said of the playoffs. “Our plan is to go to the state (finals) this year. I believe we’ve improved as a team and when we step up and play our game, we’re hard to beat.”

Pierce knows his team will need to keep up the intensity that has driven it through its championship season, particularly in the last month during the winning streak.

“You never know what you’re going to get when the playoffs come out,” Pierce said. “But what you do know about playoff basketball is that any night you can lose if you don’t play your best. Our goal is to work to play our best every night we play.”

Richard Walker: 704-869-1841; twitter.com/jrwalk22