RALEIGH — Kinston could taste the upset, but nationally-ranked DeSoto was just a little too seasoned.
Duke signee Matt Jones scored 17 points and the Eagles hit 15 of their last 16 free throws to hold off a late Vikings rally to win 57-50 and advance to the winners’ bracket in the Summit Hospitality portion of the HighSchoolOT.com Holiday Invitational at Raleigh Broughton High School on Thursday.
The Eagles (15-1), ranked 10th in the latest ESPN.com Power 25 rankings, will face Hampton (Va.), a 61-59 winner over Waxhaw Cuthbertson in Thursday's late game, today at 7:20 p.m. in the semifinals. Kinston will face Cuthbertson at 2:20 p.m. today in an elimination game. It will also be a rematch of last season's NCHSAA state 2A championship, which the Vikings won 58-55.
“It was tough,” DeSoto coach Chris Dyer said. “Kinston’s a good team. We knew it was going to be tough coming in.
“Our kids made their free throws, knocked down some shots and played some hellatious defense. … I was very proud of the team as a whole.”
Kinston’s Josh Dawson matched Jones with 17 points and Denzel Keyes added 12, but a 3-plus minute stretch in the first quarter where the Vikings went without a field goal put them in a 12-3 hole.
The spurt was led by Jones, who had something to do with all 16 of his team’s first-quarter points with five assists and a pair of buckets. But Kinston (9-1), which fell behind by as many as 15 in the first half, methodically worked its way back into the game.
“I’m proud of my kids. We got down early, big, battled back,” Kinston coach Perry Tyndall said. “I thought (the Eagles) did a really good job of really kind of pushing us out of some things that we wanted to do out of the gate.
“We settled in … (and) we competed.”
DeSoto enjoyed its last double-digit lead at 44-32 when Takedrick Brown found the bottom of the net on a long 3 with just inside of 7 minutes to play.
But Andrew Lopez answered with a 3 on the other end, sparking a 10-4 run for the Vikings as they cut it to 48-45 with 3:14 to play.
From there the veteran Eagles — 11 of their 12 players are upperclassmen — sank their free throws while Kinston went scoreless until Brandon Ingram, who scored 10 points, followed his own miss with a putback with 18 seconds to play.
DeSoto hit 12 free throws in a row at one point in the final period, and went 15-for-18 from the line for the game.
“We just had to play and do what we do in practice every day — work and stay together,” said Eagles forward Terry Maston, who scored 16 points. “It was pretty easy — the game wasn’t easy, of course — but we found a way to win.”
Down 48-45 — the closest it had been since DeSoto held a 4-3 lead early — Kinston had several good looks to tie. But Dawson, Keyes and Ingram all missed their 3-point attempts while the Eagles kept putting points on the board at the free throw line.
“We had some good really looks they just didn’t go down,” Tyndall said. “There’s going to be nights like that. … But I’m really proud of the fact that we battled back.”
Facing a team that had already knocked off the nation’s top-ranked team in Chicago Simeon and playing in front of North Carolina men’s basketball head coach Roy Williams, N.C. State head coach Mark Gottfried and several other scouts from big-time programs, Kinston didn’t seem fazed.
The Vikings, who gave up several inches on the interior to the Eagles, shared the rebounding category 24-24. Both teams’ field goal percentage was comparable with Kinston shooting 37.8 percent to DeSoto’s 37.3.
While the Vikings’ rally may have fallen short, they feel they showed they can compete with the best of the best.
“We fight all the way to the end, we don’t hang our heads,” Keyes said. “We just have to keep practicing.”
Added Dawson: “If we get down early, we still got each other’s back.”
Ryan Herman can be reached at 252-559-1073 or Ryan.Herman@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter: @KFPSports.