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Ervin blazes in 49 points in Gate City's win over Central
KEVIN MAYS • TODAY AT 2:13 AM
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NORTON — In high school, sports teams take their motivation where they can get it.
On Friday night, the Gate City boys basketball team’s motivation came from a little extracurricular activity.
With 2:25 left to play in the first quarter of Gate City’s Mountain 7 District game at Wise Central, the already-physical contest got a little more physical.
Two players made contact under the Gate City basket and a short melee followed.
Not much damage came from the ruckus, but it caused Gate City senior leader Zac Ervin to step his game up a notch.
The result was an 82-53 victory for Gate City bolstered by Ervin’s career-best 49 points.
“We let it motivate us and we came out in the second half ready to go and it showed, I think,” Ervin said. “It was a physical game and a lot of heated emotions.
“But we’ve just got to learn to get past that and play basketball, and I think we did a good job of that in the second half.”
The Blue Devils (2-0, 2-0) led 41-32 at halftime and outscored the Warriors 41-21 over the final two quarters to pull away for the win.
“It was a hot contest again. It happens like that when we play here,” said Gate City coach Scott Vermillion. “It is what it is. I thought both teams played really hard.
“With the exception of that one play,” Vermillion added, “the game was fine.”
Central coach T.J. McAmis said the game, particularly in the second half, showed the difference in maturity levels of the squads.
“The game got a little bit out of control and crazy. They’re a veteran team and they recovered and we don’t have our leader and we didn’t,” McAmis said.
“We got caught up in being emotionally invested and we lost and we lost the fundamentals that we were doing for 10 or 12 minutes.”
Bradley Dean scored 19 points for Gate City.
The Warriors (2-1, 0-1) got 10 points each from Tyler Varner and Elijah Hayes.
