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Davidson exposes Mountaineers in dominant win |
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Tuesday, 06 December 2005 |
 | David Mulvaney | The Appalachian
P.L Henderson slams the ball home during Saturday nights disapointing 102-69 loss to Davidson.
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by MATT SCHNEIDER
Intern Sports Reporter
The Davidson College Wildcats showed why they were selected as the
Preseason Southern Conference Champions, as they dismantled the
Appalachian State Mountaineers 102-69 at home Saturday.
“They taught us a major lesson tonight; if this was a TV show, it’d be
Maximum Exposure,” Mountaineers head coach Houston Fancher said.
The Mountaineers and Wildcats were two of the top teams in the Southern
Conference, but only one of those teams showed up when they clashed.
“We knew coming in that Davidson is a basketball team that very seldom
beats themselves,” said Fancher. “It’s a game that excites me as a
coach and it should excite us as players, because if you win you had to
earn it. And we certainly didn’t earn it tonight.”
Both teams played evenly through the first 10 minutes, with the scored tied at 15 with 14:00 minutes left in the first half.
Davidson used sharp shooting from three-point range by last year’s AP
All-American Honorable Mention Brendan Winters to lead a 21-5 run to
put the Mountaineers in a hole early in the game.
Winters led all scorers with 19 points, while Davidson’s Jason Morton
and forward Thomas Sander came off the bench to pitch in 16 points.
The Mountaineers had a tough time keeping the Wildcats in check from three-point range and on the boards.
Davidson won the battle of the boards 44-36, and shot 44 percent from three-point range for the game.
 | David Mulvaney | The Appalachian
Douglass McLaughlin-Williams expresses frustration Saturday. Davidson hammered Appalachian 102-69. |
“He’s Player of the Year in the conference,” Mountaineer guard
Demetrius Scott said of Winters. “When you give those points it’s one
thing, but when we let a backup post player come in and get 16 points
off the bench, you can’t do that. A lot of those people were contributors tonight and we can’t have that.”
The Mountaineers closed the gap to seven points after a Nathan Cranford
three pointer to make the score 38-31 near the end of the first half.
Davidson responded by ending the half on a 12-2 run to give the
Wildcats a 17-point lead at halftime.
Hoping for a comeback after the break, the Mountaineers came out cold
in the second half. The team missed its first 15 shots of the half and
it was not until junior Jeremy Harper made a lay-up with 9:51 left in
the second half that Appalachian made its first field goal of the half.
“We didn’t finish plays around the bucket and when you go 10 minutes
without a field goal, you’re going to have a hard time keeping up with
anybody,” Fancher said.
By the time Harper made his lay-up, Davidson had already sealed the victory as it led 75-41.
Junior guard Cranford led the Mountaineers in scoring with 14 points,
and junior P.L Henderson added 11. Point guard D.J Thompson was held in
check throughout the game, shooting only 1-13 from the field as he
finished with five points.
“They just played tough ‘D’ on me,” Thompson said. “We faced a lot of tough shots.”
One of the factors that hurt the Mountaineers was their lack of
transition defense. Davidson scored 22 fast break points, while
Appalachian had 0.
“You’d think of some of those [fast break points] are turnovers that
lead to a lot of open lay-ups, but some of those are after we make a
bucket,” Fancher said. “We don’t sprint back, and that’s the
discouraging part of losing transition buckets to them.”
While the loss drops the Mountaineers to 0-1 in conference play, it’s
still early in the season. Fancher and the Mountaineers don’t plan on
harping on the loss too much.
“It’s one game, and we have 13 more of these to play in conference
time,” Fancher said. “If we do spend much time thinking about this then
we’re going to get hammered for the next couple of weeks. Our schedule
is very unforgiving.”
Appalachian won’t return to the Holmes Center until Jan. 4, when it
takes on Marshall University. The schedule ahead of the Mountaineers
includes battles at the University of Tennessee Thursday and North
Carolina State University Saturday.
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