Al Young, head coach of boys' basketball at North Augusta High School, saw nine of his players light up the scoreboard at least once against South Aiken Friday evening, building a lead to the point where the Thoroughbreds' 20-point fourth quarter didn't make much difference.

The fourth-quarter total equalled what the Thoroughbreds scored the rest of the game, as Young's squad used smothering defense and an athletic offense to win 54-40 in the Region 5-AAAA showdown.

Leading the North Augusta attack was T.J. Sheppard with 15 points (including 11 in the first half). Tavarez Hall added 10. Young substituted freely - often going five in and five out -- and saw his squad move to 11-5 overall and 2-1 in region action.

It was the second lopsided win of the week for Young's squad, which had visited White Knoll Jan. 10 and dumped the Timberwolves by a tally of 58-37.

Referring to the game against South Aiken, Young said, "I thought our kids played pretty well, defensively. That's the main thing. There were times that we just didn't play well, when we had some turnovers and kind of got slack, but overall, I was real pleased."

South Aiken, skidding to 7-9 and 0-3, "got off to a pretty awful start, but we didn't stop playing," said Drew Jernigan, the Thoroughbreds' coach.

His squad took a beating in the second quarter, as North Augusta scored seven straight points to open up a 20-8 advantage, and it took nearly five minutes before the T-Breds found their first and only field goal of the quarter. Open looks didn't fall, and the Jackets created offense with turnovers to take a 26-10 lead into the halftime locker room.

Young's squad had built a 31-13 lead just three minutes into the second half and was up 39-20 at the end of three quarters.

"We've just got to go back and continue to correct and get our turnovers down," said Young, evaluating the overall performance. "I thought they out-rebounded us a little bit at times, so we've got to correct those things .... and that's real important, because teams continue to get better and better, so we've got to get better."

South Aiken was paced by Derrick West, who scored 11 of his game-high 17 points in the final quarter.

North Augusta was also to have played Tuesday at home against Aiken. The Jackets' next action is to be Friday at Orangeburg-Wilkinson and the next home game is to be Jan. 27 versus Lexington.

Irmo is currently the top-ranked AAAA boys' team in the High School Sports Report poll. The rest of the top 10, in order, are Lancaster, Hillcrest, Richland Northeast, Wando, Lexington, Dorman, Orangeburg-Wilkinson, Goose Creek and Gaffney.