By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — MaKayla Noble scored her 1,000th point for the Salisbury girls basketball program on Friday in a 79-46 win against Lexington.

The Albany signee did it on Senior Night, and while she only needed five points to get to the milestone, she enjoyed a super night with 28 points, equaling her career high. She made a 3-pointer to start the scoring. Then she made two free throws for an 11-1 lead.

The basic formula to score 1,000 high school points is simple if you’re good enough to be on the varsity squad as a freshman.

Play four years. Play 25 games per year. Average 10 points per game. That’s 1,000 points.

That doesn’t sound like an incredible undertaking, because 10 points is not a monster game. A lot of guys and girls can score 10 points.

But can you do it 100 times?

There are a lot of really good high school basketball players who don’t score 1,000 points, even if they’re fortunate enough to get four healthy seasons to do it.

A call came in from Salisbury the other day wondering if Mike Geter was getting close to 1,000. Geter, after all, is an All-Rowan County player who has played four varsity seasons, although one of them was a COVID freshman season that was 13 games long instead of 25. And he’s missed a few other games getting healed from the rigors of football seasons. Plus, he’s always been a better player than a scorer. The day the call came in he had just reached 700 points.

Noble’s freshman year was shortened by COVID to 16 potential games and by injury to 14 actual games. Noble missed the season-ending loss to Shelby in the second round of the random-draw 2A state playoffs. That game came down to the last shot. Shelby went on to win the state championship. Salisbury was the biggest obstacle. With Noble healthy, there’s little doubt Salisbury would have won against Shelby and it’s very likely the Hornets would have won three straight state championships instead of two.

Noble came off the bench as a freshman, although no one doubted her talent. The talent was pretty obvious. Head coach Lakai Brice was reluctant to break up a winning starting combination, so Noble came off the bench, but she promised Noble that if she kept working she would win a state championship, she would get a D-I scholarship, and she would score 1,000 points.

The first two parts of that three-phase promise already had been delivered. The final part arrived on Friday.

Noble only scored 88 points as a freshman, so she was way behind schedule for 1,000. As a sophomore, she missed five games with injuries and was still coming off the bench for a powerful 28-1 team. She scored 162 points. That put her at 250, so she was a full year behind the normal 1,000-point progression.

She got back on track as a junior. She missed one game with injury, but she averaged 13.1 points and scored 378 points for a team that got to play 30 games by going all the way. She was MVP of a defensive-minded 2A championship game.

She entered her senior year with 628 points. She’s averaged a superstar-level 19.8 points per game as a senior and has scored almost 400 points. That got her to 1,000 with some time to spare. Her points have come with great variety, off offensive rebounds, drives, spins, floaters, post-ups and 3-point bombs.

“MaKayla was patient and was a great teammate until her time came, and then she made the most of the opportunity,” Brice said. “She’s very talented. She can do it all on a basketball court.”

Noble is the 15th to score 1,000 for the Salisbury girls program. She’s the fifth during Brice’s coaching tenure. The others were Kyla Bryant, Rachel McCullough, Anayia Fulson and Bryanna Troutman.

Quite a few of the county’s seniors, who were COVID freshmen, have managed to make it to 1,000. Earlier this season, North Rowan’s Brittany Ellis and West Rowan’s De’Mya Phifer and Will Givens Jr. reached 1,000. Salisbury’s Juke Harris, North’s Bailee Goodlett and West’s Lauren Arnold reached the milestone before their senior seasons. West’s Emma Clarke is on deck and could get there during the South Piedmont Conference Tournament.

Noble’s eight-point first quarter pushed the Hornets to a 21-6 lead after a quarter on Senior Night. It was 35-15 at halftime, and the Hornets cruised from there.

Jamyrah Cherry had another strong game with 14 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists.

Shamya Arnold got nine of her 10 points in the fourth quarter.

Lexington    6    9    16    15   — 46

Salisbury     21   14  22   22   — 79

SALISBURY — Noble 28, Cherry 14, Arnold 10, McCombs 7, Evans 6, Pearson-Hasty 6, Spruill 4, Zapata 2, Myers 2.

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