There’s something to be said about being able to win a game by double digits, never really being threatened in the second half, and still not being particularly happy about it.
Such is the case for Allen Community College’s men, who opened the Region VI playoffs Monday with an 86-73 win over visiting Labette.
But the Cardinals gave Jayhawk Conference champion Allen fits, and seemed to answer every time the Red Devils threatened to blow the game open.
“We’ve gotta be better in a lot of different areas,” Allen coach Andy Shaw said. “We didn’t have the right mentality tonight. I don’t want to say it was dysfunctional, but that wasn’t how we typically play.”
The Cardinals’ pressure defense flummoxed Allen early on.
“We’re typically one of the better teams in the conference at taking care of the basketball, but we weren’t tonight,” Shaw said, pointing to the Red Devils’ 12 first-half turnovers.
The top-seeded Red Devils slowly found their footing, and led 35-28 at the break.
A quick Ed Wright 3-pointer to open the second half pushed Allen’s advantage to 38-28.
The rest of the game was a back-and-forth affair, with neither team able to seize momentum.
Labette pulled to within 53-48 with 8:40 left before Allen’s Ahmed Mahgoub hit a pair of free throws for a seven-point lead.
“We kept letting them get to the paint, and then we’d put ’em on the line, or they’d hit tough shots,” Shaw said.
Wright took the game over shortly thereafter. The lead was six when Wright scored from the lane. Labette missed a 3-pointer and Wright responded with a long-range trey that rolled around the rim and dropped to push the lead back to 12 with 5:45 left.
But Labette wouldn’t go away, responding with an 8-2 run to slice the lead to 67-51.
Nick Whittick responded for Allen with a traditional 3-point play to push the lead back to nine.
Labette stayed within shouting distance before Wright drained another 3-pointer from the corner at the 2-minute mark to make it a 77-67 lead.
The Red Devils hit 9 of 10 free throws from there to keep things from getting too interesting.
