Myrtle Beach boys pull away in second half to beat North Myrtle Beach

Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach traded runs early on and were neck-and-neck for the length of the first half Friday night.

However, the Seahawks pulled away after halftime behind the play of junior forward Bryce Schneider.

Schneider scored 11 of his game-high 25 points in the third quarter alone to put Myrtle Beach ahead, and the Seahawks held off the Chiefs for a 69-51 win to improve to 1-3 in Region VII-AAA play.

“Anytime you play North Myrtle Beach and have an opportunity to compete with them, it’s always good. It’s a rivalry game; they get after it and we get after it,” Martin said. “Coach [Cameron Koehler] is doing a great job with those guys; they’re playing really well. We’re just happy to get out of here with a nice region win, especially against North Myrtle Beach.”

The Seahawks opened the game on a quick 8-2 run. However, the Chiefs countered with an 11-2 run to take a 13-10 advantage and it was back-and-forth to halftime, where North Myrtle Beach led 27-26.

“I was just preaching the little things,” Martin said. “A lot of times we try to make the game more difficult than it really is. If we just focus on the little things, I think it goes a long way and they did a better job from the third quarter on, working on those little things and they executed better.”

Myrtle Beach came on strong after the break, outscoring the Chiefs 28-10 in the third quarter and pulled away. Robert Swanson finished with 13 points and Adam Zam scored 12 for the Seahawks.

North Myrtle Beach’s Reese Finch had all 11 of his points in the first half and Merrille Moss also scored all seven of his points before halftime as well.

“It was a tale of two games. In the first half we came out and played well, executed, rebounded and did a little bit of everything. We shut down some of their best players,” Koehler said. “In the second half, we came out flat and dug ourselves into a hole we couldn’t get out of.”

The Chiefs sit at 2-2 in region play heading into a home game against Lake City on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m.

“[Lake City is] a very tough team, but we have them at home, which helps out a lot. We always play well at home,” Koehler said. “With our team, we’ve got so many young guys – guys that haven’t played much basketball together. It’s a learning curve every single game and we’re getting better and better every game, but we haven’t played perfect yet. We haven’t done what we wanted to do and we’re not quite the team we want to be, but as we progress and get through things I think we’ll eventually get there.”

For Martin, it was just nice to get a win and get things going in such a tough region.

“[This was] extremely important,” he said. “There’s not a lot of games – only 10 games – and you don’t have a whole lot of time to do anything else but win and we need to get on a winning streak right away.”

This story was originally published January 22, 2016 at 11:23 PM with the headline "Myrtle Beach boys pull away in second half to beat North Myrtle Beach."