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THE PLAINS — One game at a time, Meigs has taken Southeast Ohio by storm.
Coming into the season with high expectations, the Marauders have yet to disappoint through their first 11 games, boasting a perfect record so far.
The catalyst of the team’s success has been none other than Carson Davis, who, as he’s done every night so far, put on a show on Tuesday.
Davis knocked down six triples, putting together a 30-point, 13-rebound effort to lift his team to a 60-45 victory at Athens.
CREDIT: Derrick Webb/SOSA
“We count on him sometimes to start our offense. Tonight, he kept getting open looks. There were some times that it wasn’t the best look for us, but most of the time, if he can stand still and shoot it, that’s something that we’ll take,” Meigs coach Ryan Davis said. “Tonight, things weren’t as clean as they have been, but we took what we could get and we weren’t giving it back.”
The night had Davis’ name written all over it, and he set the tone in the first quarter.
After Athens took a 6-5 lead with 3’s from Leo Martin and Collin Chapman, the 6-foot-8 junior took charge and paced the offense.
Knocking down a pair of treys on the way, Davis put up 12 of his team’s 17 points in the first eight minutes to put Meigs out to a 17-10 advantage.
The Marauders (11-0, 4-0 TVC) never looked back from there, but not without some resistance.
Athens came out of the timeout and found a rhythm from outside, connecting on its first three attempts. Chapman, along with Zach Mullins and Weston Wheatley, all joined the party and cut Meigs’ lead to 22-19 in the front half of the second quarter.
Meigs wasn’t fazed, though. While Davis was quiet in the second compared to his explosive first frame, the Marauders got a spark off the bench from senior Dustin Vance.
While the Bulldogs tried to key in on Davis defensively, Vance found himself with multiple open looks inside and made several trips to the charity stripe, finishing the first half with nine points. His contributions helped the Marauders end the half on a 9-2 run to go into the break with a 31-22 lead.
“Obviously, we want to win, so I think if I can contribute by coming off the bench and doing the small things, I think it’s going to lead to bigger things,” Vance said. “It’s huge to me, coming off the bench, because they’re not keying on me. They’re keying on Carson. It frees me up and I can just play ball.”
Athens (5-5, 2-2 TVC) wasn’t ready to wave the white flag just yet, though.
After a quiet first half, Easton Nuzum became a spark plug in the Bulldog’s offense. Crashing the offensive glass, Nuzum created numerous second-chance opportunities for his team and rewarded himself with points inside — scoring eight in the quarter.
His efforts were responsible for bringing Athens to within four points, trailing 35-31, before Meigs’ Reid Brinager finished a put-back to push the lead back to 37-31 at the 3:29 mark.
Meigs had the momentum from that point on.
With 2:21 left, Davis — who was unsuccessful on his last five tries from outside — buried a contested 3-pointer to extend the lead to 40-31. Then, after an Athens basket inside, Davis again connected from downtown with 1:27 left to bring the Marauders’ lead to 43-33. That 10-point advantage stayed intact at the end of the quarter.
In desperation time, Athens tried to play long ball to get back in the game, but it was to no avail as the Bulldogs connected on just one of nine 3-point attempts in the final quarter.
Meanwhile, Brinager chalked up six points in the fourth while Davis added another five and five rebounds to his total, finishing off the Bulldogs and a conference victory.
“Every team we play, we’re going to be bigger than them most of the time. We try to run teams off the 3-point line, which we really didn’t do in the first half. We were just letting them stand still and shoot wide-open 3’s. So it was just stopping that, and offensively we needed to bang in the paint, which I think we did,” Carson Davis said. “We’ve got a bunch of guys that kind of just do their thing, but we’ve also got a bunch of guys that can score the ball. If we can keep growing as a team, that’s when we’ll get really good and have tons of success.”
Following Davis’ big night, Vance followed with 13 points and eight boards of his own. Brinager finished with a 10-point, nine-rebound performance, and Owen Tracy dished out a team-high six assists for the Marauders.
On the other side, Wheatley led the Bulldogs with 13 points, while Nuzum and Martin finished with 10 points each.
Both teams are back in action against TVC-Ohio opponents on Friday. Athens hits the road for a rivalry matchup at Alexander, while Meigs looks to defend home court against Nelsonville-York.
“Right now, our main focus is on us. We’re trying to make sure we keep improving. Not that we take any of our opponents lightly, but we have a lot of things we can do on both ends of the floor to dictate the game,” Ryan Davis said. “Tonight, we didn’t really dictate some things on either end of the floor. Hopefully, we can get back to dictating the game and playing to the pace we want to play at.”
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