Keith Gedamke / The Item Sumter's David Henderson (21) goes to the basket as Crestwood's Xavier Bolden defends on Tuesday. The Gamecocks cruised to a 67-29 win.
Sumter High School started the varsity boys basketball game with an alley-oop dunk and never looked back against Crestwood.
The Gamecocks weren't a well-oiled machine, but never struggled as they cruised to a 57-28 win at the Castle on Tuesday.
SHS improved to 12-2 on the season while Crestwood dropped to 4-8.
There is no doubt that this team has potential, said SHS head coach Nathan Livesay, whose team won the first meeting between the two teams 57-28 on Dec. 12. There's a lot of physical talent and a lot of potential. We're still young and inexperienced. In our top eight, we've got two seniors.
I like what this team has a chance to do, he added. What I'm really excited about is that we've got five practices in a row with everybody before we play South Florence (on Tuesday). That's the first time all year that we've had mostly everybody together and we can go to practice for a solid week and we can try to fix some of the inconsistencies that we've been having.
On the first possession of the game, Kameron Dunnican received a pass at the elbow before passing back to D.J. Coleman. Coleman then tossed a perfectly placed pass for Dunnican to slam home and the Gamecocks led 2-0.
It's nice to have guys that can do that, said Livesay. When you've got as good of a passer as D.J. and a kid as athletic as Kameron, it would be kind of silly to not take advantage of that. We were fortunate enough to take advantage of it on the first play of the game. It kind of set the tone for the kind of intensity we were going to play with.
Sumter took a 19-6 lead after the first stanza. The Gamecocks led 30-13 at the half before taking a 51-20 lead into the final quarter.
Crestwood's starting lineup consisted of two freshmen (Garion Williams, Seth Fitzgerald), two sophomores (Kalum McIntyre, Reginald Bradford) and a senior (Kevin Bennett.
We're trying to find that nucleus, said Crestwood head coach Dwayne Edwards. We're a little young. Just trying to give the kids an opportunity to see if they're ready to play or not. We're going through a little rebuilding stage, but they've got to be ready to play.
We knew we'd take some bumps this year, but there is a lot of room for improvement, he added. You hope the kids can keep their confidence. That's more of a concern than anything.
Livesay commented on his team's depth and pointed to the fact that 12 Gamecocks scored and Eren Moses led with just 11 points. David Henderson was next with 10 points.
You always want to be a little better than you are, he said. I think we'll be able to tell a little better where we are on Tuesday. We'll be on the road against a veteran team with five days of practice. I think we'll get a pretty good gauge based on that.
It doesn't gett any easier for Crestwood. The Knights will travel to defending 3A state champion Camden on Friday to open Region V-3A play.
The young kids have a good attitude about it and still think it's a lot of fun, said Edwards. The attitude is there. They're young and are going to make mistakes, but I think they go out there and give me all that they have. I can live with that.
School
Sumter routs Crestwood again to improve to 12-2
