Staff report

SALISBURY — Salisbury’s girls basketball team struggled to score in its first two games, but the Hornets are playing with more confidence now.

The Hornets (3-2, 1-0) pounded West Davidson 66-38 on Friday for their third straight win. That’s a team that went down to the wire with East Rowan on Wednesday.

“We are getting better,” Salisbury coach Lakai Brice said. “We beat a good team with a very good player (Wyatt Cooper). But we’ve still got a lot of room to improve. We’ve got to make more layups and we’ve got to make more free throws. We’ve got to foul less. The change to shooting two free throws (after the fifth foul of a quarter) is changing our game. We can’t try to block every shot.”

Salisbury won by 28 on Friday despite shooting 8-for-27 from the foul line.

The good news was the Hornets piled up hustle stats such as rebounds and steals.

Torese Evans had a career game — 27 points, five steals, five assists.

Keaira Spruill had 12 points, 10 rebounds, seven steals and four assists. Jaliyah McNeely had nine points, 13 rebounds and eight steals. Janiyah Fomond had seven rebounds and three blocks.

Spruill and McNeely also did the defensive job against Cooper and held her to 11 points.

“That was partly due to Cooper having to chase Torese around,” Brice said. “She got tired.”

West Davidson     9    7   16    6   — 38

Salisbury               18   20  16   12  — 66

SALISBURY scoring — Evans 27, Spruill 12, McNeely 9, Zapata 5, Pearson-Hasty 4, Myers 3, Fomond 2, Fatovic 2.