First round at Oran plays out as seeded

ORAN - The Oran Invitational Tournament got under way on Monday with three first round games.

All the games went as seeded with No. 1 Twin Rivers beating No. 8 North Pemiscot 69-45; No. 2 Richland beat No. 7 Gideon 84-61; and No. 3 Bell City beat No. 6 Scott County Central 82-59.

Richland trailed after one quarter against Gideon 17-16, but the Rebels dominated from that point on.

Richland, playing its first game of the season, outscored Gideon (1-1) 22-10 in the second quarter and 27-18 in the fourth to win the game going away.

Senior guard Sherome Cole scored 30 points, including 22 in the second half. The Rebels placed 10 different players in the scoring column.

"We made a lot of first-game mistakes," said Richland head coach Jim Lincoln. "We calmed down in the second half and started picking up our defensive intensity. We started getting some easy layups and that kind of got us going."

The Rebels were severely outsized by the Bulldogs, who started a front line of 6-5, 6-5 and 6-3 with a 6-6 player off the bench.

Richland's tallest starter is 6-1.

"There were times where all five of their players on the floor were taller than my tallest player," said Lincoln. "We didn't rebound well. We talked about the three keys to winning before the game and rebounding was No. 1. We're just going to have to rebound better than that. We were just standing around and watching."

Richland also got double-figure scoring out of Travis Nelson (11) and Josh McMullen (10). The Rebels hit 12 3-pointers in the contest to offset the size mismatch.

Richland will play Bell City on Thursday at 8 p.m. Gideon falls to the loser's bracket where they will play Scott Central today at 6 p.m.

The Royals overcame a sluggish first half to pull away from the pesky Mustangs.

The defending champion Royals led the No. 8 seed 29-23 at halftime. Twin Rivers used a 40-22 edge in the second half to advance to the semifinals.

Twin Rivers was led in scoring by Robbie Moore with 15 and Matt Thurman with 14.

Twin Rivers will play the winner of today's Oran-Kelly game on Thursday night at 6:30.

North Pemiscot will play the loser of that game.

The Cubs got 22 points out of Eric Henry and 14 out of C.J. Hadley to defeat the Braves.

Bell City led 32-28 at the half but outscored Scott Central 27-6 in the third quarter to put the game away.

Scott Central was led by Chris Johnson with 22 points.

Terrance Williams added 18 points for the Braves.