Kings ground Griffins
Kings 80 Griffins 58
By the time the MacEwan Griffins got on the scoreboard the RDC Kings were well on their way to a one game lead in the best-of-three Alberta College Men’s Basketball League quarter-final series.
It wasn’t until 3:04 remaining in the first quarter that the Griffins managed to finally hit a free throw and by then they were down 15-1. They actually narrowed the gap to 18-8 by the end of the first 10 minutes, but that was as close as they got in dropping an 80-58 decision to the Kings before more than 300 partisan fans at RDC on Thursday.
“I didn’t expect that (a 15-0 lead) for sure,” said Kings Randy Davis. “I thought it would be a tough game, but everyone was excited and came out hard.”
Kings head coach Craig Behan knew his troops would be ready.
“We’ve been looking forward to this for a week and a half . . . in fact the guys have been ready for the playoffs since January,” he said.
“I liked our preparation and the guys did a good job on how to defend in certain situations and we were able to jump on them early and create easy buckets inside.”
As well the Griffins simply couldn’t control either Davis or Billy McNutt.
Davis finished with 25 points — 16 in the first half — while McNutt had 17 points and 15 rebounds in only 17 minutes of playing time.
“They tried fronting me early on, but there was a mismatch . . . it was simply a size difference, and they especially had no answer for Billy, who’s over 200 pounds and six-foot-eight.”
“They’re tough to handle and we did a good job of getting the ball inside to them, which opened up the outside,” added Behan.
Griffins head coach Ryan Dunkley went into the game feeling they had a game plan to handle the two RDC stars.
“We worked on how to defend against them all week, trying to make their post ups tougher and put pressure on the ball to make their passes tougher, but I didn’t see evidence of any of that,” he said. “Maybe we were nervous. Whatever it was that wasn’t the type of team we are . . . we’re better than that.”
Dunkley wasn’t surprised at how well the Kings played.
“Give them all the credit in the world, they played well, but I was surprised how we came out. All the stuff we prepared for we didn’t do. We looked like a deer in headlights. We were never in it.”
The Kings led 39-20 at the half and 61-37 after three quarters. Both teams went to the bench for much of the fourth quarter.
While the Kings scored 80 points it was their defence, that held the Griffins to 26 points below their season average, that impressed Behan.
“You never know what will happen on offence, but the one thing we can control is our defence,” he said. “The guys understand that and are buying into that. Defence is the anchor of our team and tonight it was good.”
Andrew Cassidy added eight points for the Kings while Corey Saban had 10 for the Griffins.
The teams meet again tonight at MacEwan with the third game, if necessary Saturday at 7 p.m. at RDC.
And Davis was taking anything for granted.
“You know they’ll be a lot tougher, especially in their gym and with their season down to one game,” he said.
• Both Davis and McNutt were named to the ACAC’s South Division’s first all-conference team Friday.
Davis was the leading scorer in the south with McNutt was second in scoring and first in rebounding and in blocked shots. In fact his 55 blocked shots was a league record, shattering the old mark of 29.
Former Notre Dame Cougar Denver Corbiere of Lethbridge, Ndale Philbert of Lethbridge and Brett Kobe of Mount Royal were also on the first team.
• In other quarter-final action, Lethbridge downed Lakeland College 92-80, Mount Royal stopped NAIT 81-71 and Concordia downed Medicine Hat 98-90. On the women’s side, SAIT beat Concordia 65-59, MacEwan defeated Medicine Hat 71-50 and King’s upset Mount Royal 64-54.
Contact Danny Rode at drode@reddeeradvocate.com
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