By Bart Isley/Scrimmage Play.com
If Daiquan West can handle his point guard duties for Albemarle the way he did Saturday night against archrival Western Albemarle, the Patriots should get better and better as the year goes on.
The junior controlled the tempo for Albemarle from the game’s start and sparked the Patriots to a 54-43 victory.
West had six assists in the contest and provided constant pressure on Western’s guards, which helped keep the Warriors at bay. After Western knotted the game at 28-28 in the third quarter, West and the Patriots went to work, feeding post players like Andrew Mann and Rashad Talley. A pair of 3-pointers late in the half by Andrew Frazier and Luke Ford also ignited things for Albemarle.
It was the Patriots’ team defense that led the way though, containing Western for 32 minutes.
“That’s gotta be our strength right now—playing tremendous defense,” said Albemarle coach Greg Maynard. “We’ve done that in the two district games we had this week, but we hadn’t done anything on offense, but we’ve been playing really hard on defense.”
Mann and Talley were strong in the post, with Mann coming up with 12 points off the bench while Talley led the Patriots with 13 points. Mann also hauled in six rebounds.
“He’s a lifesaver — all he does is hustle and hustle like a robot,” West said. “You think you’re getting down on yourself and then he gets the ball and makes something happen.”
Albemarle also got just enough scoring from beyond the arc—just a few days after a 3-for-40 night from the 3-point line—with Dalton Stokes burying a pair of long balls in addition to Frazier, Ford and Mayn Francisco’s 3-pointers.
Things got off to a rough start for Western with a technical foul for a dunking during warm-ups violation before the opening tip, a call which forced coach Darren Maynard to coach from his seat the entire game. The fouls continued to pile up for Western during the game with Dante Crawford and Stephen Schuler both struggling with fouls. That forced Western to rely on its bench, and scoring was hard to come by.
Crawford finished with eight points while Christian Pierce led the Warriors with 16 points. Travis Hester finished with eight points. Pierce, Crawford and Jake Nidiffer each tallied five boards.
“I thought we dug back really nicely and tied it up,” Maynard said. “Then they put Dante right on the bench and I thought that was a big turning point, but I’m pretty proud.”
