Portageville rolls past Kelly

PORTAGEVILLE - The Portageville Bulldogs racked up their second win of the young season Tuesday night by whipping the Kelly Hawks 63-46. The loss dropped the Hawks to 1-3.

After an evenly-played first period when the Bulldogs led by only four at 18-14, the wheels came off for the Hawks in the second when numerous turnovers and potent scoring by Portageville put them in a deficit from which they could not recover.

Jordan Penn, who led all scorers in the contest with 17 points, was the big gun for the Bulldogs. He collected 10 of his points in the period.

Jimmy Larry nailed two 3-pointers in the second also and when it was done, Portageville had out-scored Kelly 24-4 to make the score 42-18 at halftime.

Portageville's second five players were less effective defensively in Tuesday's contest than they were in their opening game, but combined for 18 points led by Cory Chamberlain's seven.

Willie Hassell joined Penn in double figures with 15 points.

Kendal Deason, Derek Felter and Kent Deason each had 10 points for Kelly.

"I thought our senior bunch came out and played hard. They had to get the cobwebs out the first couple of minutes, but they settled down and played well together as a unit," said Bulldog coach Jim Bidewell. "I was really pleased with their effort. The juniors kind of had a brain lapse tonight, after playing so well in the opening game, but hopefully we'll put it all together. We played our quickness well tonight, and I think we played well as a unit."

In the second half, Kelly showed some signs of life and outscored the Bulldogs 28-21, but it was not nearly enough to threaten the Portageville advantage.

Coach Cory Johnson, who is in his first year at Kelly summed his team's play: "We have to learn to play together as a team. If you watched Portageville play and watched us play, you saw one team play together and play to their potential and one team just kind of fall apart when the other team put some pressure on them. With only four games played in the season, I have learned that if we don't learn to play together, it will be a long season. But I still have a lot of confidence in our team and we will never give in and I know we will come back strong."

Portageville won the jayvee contest 50-29.

Portageville will travel to Hayti night to take on the Indians while Kelly will go to St. Vincent for a game with the Indians.