Box Score
It doesn't appear any team is quite up to the task yet of knocking off Kentucky Wesleyan.
The No. 9 Panthers (9-0, 1-0 Great Lakes Valley Conference) dismantled visiting Maryville (11-3, 0-2 GLVC), 83-53, at home on Thursday night to take their unblemished record into the new year and into conference play.
"The biggest thing was I thought we prepared defensively," coach Todd Lee said. "It was one of our better preparations.
We had a number of days to prepare for them. They run a tough offense to guard and I thought our guys, for the most part, stuck to what we were trying to do…they're a team that shoots 50 percent on the season and we held them to 35 percent, which is a great number."
It was truly a dominant effort by the Panthers, who shot 51.9 percent from the field as a team and never trailed in 40 minutes of action.
Maryville's Asa Toney buried a 3-pointer midway through the second half to make it a 10-point game, 52-42, but that was the last of the Saints' hopes of making it a game.
KWC rattled off an 8-0 run and eventually stretched the lead to 71-45 with 5:00 left to play after mixing some inside plays with
Dazmond Starke and some 3-pointers from
Lucas Barker.
"I thought we just backed off," Lee said. "We had a stretch there where we backed off and lost our intensity a little bit. They're too good a team and they shoot a lot of 3s. So if you back off and you're not intense, they'll knock down 3s and that's what they did.
"
Lucas Barker knocking down 3s, kind of at the end of the shot clock, was big. There was just a couple minutes there where we backed off."
Both Starke and Barker led the team on the stat sheet.
Starke scored 21 points and grabbed nine rebounds in 25 minutes off the bench, while Barker had 14 points, seven rebounds and six assists in 36 minutes.
It was yet another balanced scoring effort by KWC, which Lee said will have to be the case night in and night out for this team to continue to be successful.
"That's the way we've played all year – good balance," he said.
KWC had more than just the score going its way on Thursday. What was good news to the Panthers will be bad news for opponents.
Senior starters
Cornbread Walker and
Kreig Oxley both returned to the lineup against Maryville after missing almost a month each due to injuries.
Walker finished with nine points and Oxley had six.
Oxley was cleared to play on Monday and Walker was cleared on Thursday just prior to the game. Lee said both aren't 100 percent yet and are still dealing with some pain, but both felt like they were ready to play against Maryville.
But those two and the rest of the team will now have to get used to rigorous GLVC schedule, which often leaves teams with just one day to prepare for certain opponents.
For KWC, that task starts right away with just one day to prepare for Missouri-St. Louis, which lost to Southern Indiana, 66-54, on Thursday.
"I thought we had a great preparation, but we had a number of days to do it," Lee said. "This is a quick turnaround. We have one day and a shoot-around to prepare for Missour-St. Louis. They're in the same boat…I was proud of how prepared for this game, but we've got to come back (Friday) and be mature about our preparation for Missouri-St. Louis because they were picked to win (the West Division) and they're a very good team."
