Rockdale Citizen

COVINGTON -- The Ram nation came out and dominated Saturday's county rival match up at Eastside winning by a combined 42 points.

Newton's girls outscored the Lady Eagles three of the four quarters in their 58-43 win.

The boys also won three quarters outright, including out scoring Eastside 20-7 in the fourth to win the game 70-43.

BOYS

Newton 70, Eastside 43

Eastside started the game trying to slow things down to wait for the match up they wanted, which was Jhaustin Thomas under the basket.

Their patience allowed Thomas to put the Eagles up 4-0 before Newton came back scoring 11 unanswered points. From then on Eastside was forced to speed up their play allowing the Rams to start to play their game.

"We just came out and played like we normally do. Inside, we had to adjust to (Thomas) so it took us a second to adjust to that," Newton coach Rick Rasmussen said. "But other than that, we came out and played our normal game."

Leading 16-8 after the opening period, Newton extended their lead by scoring 18-second quarter points to Eastside's 12, with Derrick Henry scoring nine.

Henry, who had a game-high 27 points, scored 14 points in the first half.

The Eagles made some noise to start the second half to tie at 16 points each before Newton shut them down in the fourth period.

Brandon Carlton, who made all of his points from beyond the arc, had 12 points followed by Darius Miller, who had two energizing dunks, with eight points.

Michael Tucker paced the Eagles with 11 points.

In Friday's games, Newton improved their Region 2-AAAAA record to 10-0 after beating Stephenson 55-43.

Eastside lost a non-subregion game to Elbert County 71-44 with Thomas scoring 22 points followed by Sears with 10.

GIRLS

Newton 58, Eastside 43

The first quarter started as a shoot-out with both teams trading baskets until Qaiserah Shariff started a 9-0 run to give the Lady Rams a 15-8 lead. However, Eastside came back scoring the last four points of the period to close the gap to 15-12.

The Rams were able to duplicate their output in the second period while holding Eastside to nine, taking a 30-21 lead into the locker room.

"Anytime you have a good lead at halftime it definitely helps you get closer to that W in the end," Newton coach Tiffani Johnson said.

Martice Hyman and Shariff scored 14 and 11 points respectively for Newton.

Leading the Lady Eagles offensively was Jjade Cook with 11 points.

In Friday's contest, the Lady Eagles were able to collect a 46-39 win over Elbert County with Keresa Howard leading the team with 10 points.

The Lady Rams lost to a tough Stephenson team 45-28. Leah Butler led the team with eight points.