Reece Davidson's 20 points lead North Laurel past Warren Central in first round of state tournament

North Laurel gave Warren Central a taste of its own medicine on Wednesday in Rupp Arena.

The No. 10 Jaguars used a 13-4 second-quarter run to pull off the 52-38 upset of the No. 4 Dragons in the opening round of the 2026 UK HealthCare Boys Basketball Sweet 16. Senior forward Reece Davidson, committed to Liberty, did most of the heavy lifting for his North Laurel squad, scoring a team-high 20 points, including a perfect 3-3 mark from long range, to go along with six rebounds.

Warren Central opened the game with an early 9-4 lead, even knocking down four three-pointers through the first quarter, but it was all Jaguars from there. A huge second quarter from North Laurel blew the game open going into halftime. The Dragons shot just 29.2 percent from the field for the game and only made three more triples after a hot shooting start. Six first-half turnovers proved costly.

“They made shots. We didn’t,” Warren Central head coach William Unseld said postgame. “We gave ourselves a chance a couple of times, but they made shots again. Every time we got ready to go on a run, they made shots. That’s life sometimes.”

Reece Davidson leads North Laurel with 20 pts! Upsets #4 Warren Central 52-38 in first round pic.twitter.com/Rd0UrZsFrN

— SterlingVision (@sterlingvis1) March 18, 2026

Behind a full-court press, Warren Central managed to win the third frame by a point, making it a single-digit game going into the final quarter. But North Laurel’s lead was too much to overcome. Even with 10 turnovers in the second half, the Jaguars hit timely shots again and again.

Corey Cunagin (11 points, four rebounds) and Kaiden Allen (10 points, seven rebounds) chipped in double-figure scoring games for head coach Nate Valentine. Running with a five-man rotation, North Laurel never ran out of gas, shooting 8-16 from deep and 10-12 from the free-throw line.

“This is what you dream about. When you’re a little kid and you start playing basketball, this is what you dream about, to play in the Sweet 16,” Valentine said. “You get a day off. So go out there and give it all you got and we’ll rest and recover and get ready for the next one.”

Warren Central is usually the team that wears the opponent down. The Dragons came into this game allowing just 50.9 points per contest, the 18th-best number in the state. North Laurel only barely surpassed that mark, but it was the Jaguars’ defense that had Unseld feeling like he was looking in a mirror.

“What they did to us is what we normally do,” he said. “We hold teams to single-digit quarters. We had four points in the second quarter and that’s the basketball game.”

Only one Warren Central player hit double-digits in scoring. Kauraun Johnson led his team with 13 points, but no other Dragon scored more than six. Warren Central only turned the ball over twice throughout the second half, but North Laurel was able to pass around the press and kill the clock down the stretch.

“We just feed off each other,” North Laurel senior guard Jordan Rawlings, who added nine points on 3-7 shooting from distance, said. “Out there, it’s like a big family. Whenever we have something go good for somebody, we just feed off of that and we all get excited. It really boosts us up.”

North Laurel has earned a full day off with Wednesday’s win. They’ll need the extra rest, too. The reward for knocking off a top-five team is the chance to battle another. The Jaguars will take on top-ranked St. Xavier, which took down No. 2 Covington Catholic in the first game of the day, in the quarterfinals on Friday morning.

Tipoff is set for 11:00 a.m. ET back inside Rupp Arena.

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