From staff reports

SALISBURY — A lot of tough Salisbury boys basketball players are still on the football field, but the Hornets started the season off on Tuesday with a high-scoring Central Carolina Conference loss to Thomasville.

  There were some crazy swings. Salisbury trailed by 14 early, then surged ahead by 56-40 in the third quarter.

The Bulldogs forced turnovers to come back and finally won it 88-85, with Tyree Barnes getting 24 of his 26 points in the second half.

“It’s hard to make games up in a league the size of the CCC, so we felt like the best thing to do was just go play, and we’ll play as many games as we need to with the nine guys we have on the roster right now,” SHS coach Bryan Withers said. “Our effort was great, but we play very fast and we just wore down some. Moving forward, I’ll trust our three new guys more. They can play.”

Salisbury used six players almost all of the time.

Zay Kesler (21), Latavian White (19), Joseph Witherspoon (14), Jacquez Smith  (14) and Nate Brown (10) scored in double figures.

Nygerian Crawford added 17 for the Bulldogs, while Malcolm Knight had 14.

“Defensively, we left a lot to be desired and some inexperience really hurt us,” Withers said. “We turned it over a lot when we had the lead, and they’re good. They turned those turnovers into easy buckets.”

THOMASVILLE (88) —  Barnes 24, Crawford 17, Knight 14, Luckey 10, Carolina 10, Johnson 5, Washington 3, Williams 2, Clay 1.

SALISBURY (85) — Kesler 21, White 19, Witherspoon 14, Smith 14, Brown 10, Stout 5, Still 2, Cherry, Harry.

Thomasville    22   15  25  26   — 88

Salisbury         23    25  17 20   — 85

East boys fall

  GRANITE QUARRY — East Rowan’s boys basketball team played a strong first half, but ran out of gas against Central Cabarrus.

The Vikings made a big run and won Tuesday’s non-conference game, 80-54.

David Jordan scored 14 to lead East (1-2), while Sammy Pinckney and Jake Hunter scored 10 each.

Jaiden Thompson scored 18 for Central.

Central (1-0) shot 45 percent from the field and made eight 3-pointers.

CENTRAL (80) — Thompson 18, Bessette 16, Bost 13,  Cornish 12, Johnson 10, Steed 3, Glover 3, Bullock 3, Baker 2.

E. ROWAN (54) — Jordan 14, Pinckney 10, Hunter 10, Sprinkle 9, Padgett 5, Valley 3, Shuping 2, Jones 2.

Central  19  12  21 28 — 80

East        16   16  15  7 — 54