By Mike London
mlondon@salisburypost.com – – See a gallery of photos from the game here. – – Davie’s girls didn’t give East Rowan any reason to dream about an upset.
It was 16-2 after six minutes, and the second-seeded War Eagles cruised to a 63-38 victory over the seventh-seeded Mustangs in a Moir Classic first-round game Monday.
“That was the kind of start we’ve been trying to have all year,” pleased Davie coach Debbie Evans said. “East is a team that can shoot , so we wanted to make a statement early and never let them get into the game.”
Davie had beaten East 68-34 and 83-58 before Christmas, so the result was no shock.
“Still, our mindset was the third time was going to be the hardest, and they weren’t going to just give it to us,” Davie senior guard Kaycee Dixon said. “It was important that we came out and got that good head start.”
East had one nice flurry, scoring eight straight, including a driving three-point play by Alaina Vanderford, to fight back to 16-10. But the War Eagles (8-1) reasserted themselves in the second quarter. It was 35-17 and all but over with at halftime.
Sophomore Janna Dixon scored 14 points for the War Eagles, and freshman Tia Clement had 11. All 12 Davie players scored. Eight of them got in the book in the first quarter.
Vanderford led East with eight points. Madalyn File and Mackenzie Holshouser contributed six apiece.
For the game, East lost the turnover battle 30-19, lost the rebounding competition 56-36 and shot 23.9 percent from the field. It’s not easy to beat a bad team with those numbers, much less a pretty good one.
The most startling stat was Davie’s control of the backboards. Reserve Myshia Turner grabbed three straight offensive rebounds on one possession, typical of the War Eagles’ dominance on the glass. Davie held a 37-17 advantage on the boards at halftime, with an overwhelming 21-7 edge when it came to offensive rebounds.
“We got second looks and we got to the free-throw line off our rebounding and cashed in,” Evans said. “Our rebounding made a big difference for us.”
East (1-10) is off to its slowest start since it dropped its first 18 games of the 1967-68 season, but coach Karen Garmon said she’s nowhere close to throwing in the towel.
“I’m not giving up this season, but right now we lack that fire we had in the past when teams knew they were in for a tough game whenever they played East Rowan,” said Garmon, a former Mustang. “We had spurts where we played good defense, spurts where we ran our plays, spurts where we lifted each other up, but it was only spurts. We’ve got to find some way to put the pieces together.”
East ROWAN (38) ó Vanderford 8, Holshouser 6, File 6, Means 5, Corpening 5, Sabo 3, Honeycutt 3, Drew 2.davie (63) ó J. Dixon 14, Clement 11, Shelton 7, Steed 6, Turner 5, Steller 5, K. Dixon 4, Hendricks 4, Tucker 2, Smoot 2, Stevenson 2, Holland 1.E. Rowan 10 7 13 8 ó 38
Davie 19 16 12 16 ó 63