By BRYAN GASKINS
North Miami big men Greg Miller and Nolan Haynes had their way against Taylor in a boys basketball regular-season finale Thursday night at Center Court.
Miller went for 34 points and 14 rebounds, Haynes backed him with 20 points and 17 rebounds and the Warriors rolled to a 79-52 win. Miller and Haynes led the Warriors to an eye-popping 52-24 advantage on the boards.
“They just beat our butts,” Taylor coach Jeff Fisher said, referring to the Warriors in general and Miller and Haynes in particular. “They worked us over inside and hit [3-pointers] and shots outside. … We just have trouble with our interior defense. They’re stronger than we are, they’re better post players than we are and they hit shots.”
North Miami improved to 15-5 while Taylor dropped to 9-11.
Miller, a 6-foot-5 junior, drilled 8 of 9 shots from 3-point range to fuel his 34-point explosion.
“He is a 50 percent 3-point shooter and they were in a zone, so he stepped out,” North Miami coach Dave Henson said, noting Miller is a 65 percent shooter overall. “A couple of them banked in; obviously the Lord was on his side a little bit on some of them, but he’s a good shooter.”
Haynes, a 6-6 senior, scored 13 of his 20 points in the fourth quarter when the game turned ragged. He owned the boards nearly throughout, grabbing seven on the offensive end alone.
“He really stepped up in the second half,” Henson said. “He was a little shaky in the first half, wasn’t strong with the ball in the low post, got it knocked away from him — he was just a little indecisive. But he did a much better job in the second half.”
The Warriors closed the opening quarter on a 10-0 run to build a 24-10 lead. Miller knocked down all five of his shots in the quarter — including four from 3-land.
The Titans battled back to within four, 26-22, midway through the second quarter, but Haynes hit 3 of 4 free throws and Miller had a hoop-and-harm putback to quell the Titans’ comeback bid. The Warriors went into halftime with a 34-25 lead.
Up by eight points early in the third quarter, the Warriors followed with an 11-0 run to take the game by the throat at 48-29. Miller had a 3-pointer early in the run that made him 8 of 8 from the field to that point.
Miller closed the quarter with another triple for a 51-34 advantage. The Warriors maintained a comfortable lead throughout the final quarter en route to the 79-52 final, the most points allowed by a Taylor team since a powerful Tri-Central team went for 80 in the 2004-05 season.
Taylor held North Miami to 10 points in the second quarter, but it failed to carry the momentum into the second half.
“This is kind of us. We’ll play well, then not play so well,” Fisher said. “North Miami is a good team, give them credit, but I think if you concentrate defensively, nobody should score that many points against you. Our plan wasn’t good enough, our technique and execution weren’t good enough defensively.
“The second half, we started putting pressure on people, but dumb pressure where we’d go jump somebody and they’d make two passes and lay the ball in. I don’t have enough timeouts in a game to fix that.”
Drake Herr scored 17 points to lead the Titans. Reomey Northington followed with 11 and Seth Vautaw chipped in 10.
