By Mike London

mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — Mike Geter and Deuce Walker competed in Saturday’s Shrine Bowl in Spartanburg, S.C., while Dashawn Brown played in the East-West All-Star Game in Greensboro.

It was a noteworthy and praiseworthy weekend for Salisbury football, but it left the boys basketball team without half of its top six players for Friday’s game.

With always tough Thomasville coming to town for a Central Carolina Conference opener, there were plenty of reasons to be concerned.

After all, Thomasville had split CCC meetings with the Hornets the last two seasons. In both of those seasons the Hornets went 11-1 in the league but had to share the regular-season title with the Bulldogs.

The main thing fans took away from Friday’s game is that the Hornets are after an outright crown this season for first-year coach Albert Perkins.

Maybe North Rowan or Lexington can challenge them, but it’s unlikely they’ll be sharing anything with Thomasville. Even minus Geter, Walker and Brown — and that’s a lot of minuses — the Hornets destroyed the visitors 80-35.

Juke Harris matched Thomasville’s scoring total by himself. He only made one 3-pointer, but he had five slams. Harris’ 14-point second quarter made it 53-17 at the half, and the Hornets running-clocked Thomasville when they pushed the lead to 40 in the third quarter.

Bryce Dalton had a huge start for the Hornets. He got half of his 14 points early. Braylon Taylor made two 3-pointers and scored 12.

With three athletes missing, lots of Hornets got more minutes than normal.

Nine Hornets scored. Bo Brincefield scored his first varsity points. He got six in a flurry.

Harris pushed his career points total to 1,880. He’s scoring more than 32 points per game this season, so he may challenge the all-time Rowan County mark of 2,469 set by West Rowan’s Scooter Sherrill in 2000.

Harris, a 6-foot-6 Wake Forest recruit,  has scored 1,656 points in his three seasons at Salisbury. He scored 142 as a freshman at West Rowan during a 17-game,  COVID-shortened season. The other 82 points in his acknowledged career total are from North Hills Christian, where he played varsity ball as an eighth-grader.

Thomasville     4     13    13    5    — 35

Salisbury         25    28   21      6   — 80

SALISBURY — Harris 35, Dalton 14, Taylor 12, Brincefield 6, Davis 4, House 4, Matthews 2, T. Brown 2, Webb 1.