Against Miller’s boys basketball team, sometimes, it doesn’t matter what you do.
“Mychal Parker hit two threes — guarded threes — from two steps behind the line,” said Covenant coach Ben D’Alessandro. “You can’t control that.”
Parker’s two three-pointers and a flurry of third quarter dunks ignited the Mavericks in a 66-54 victory over Covenant Thursday night.
“We were just focused when we came back out,” said Miller forward Brice Kofane. “Every game we have this problem in the first five minutes of the second half and give up a lot of baskets, so we just wanted to come out focused.”
Of late, Miller has erased some of those third quarter misfortunes, and Kofane played a big role in the run and finished with 17 points and 10 rebounds for the contest. The versatile forward also gave Covenant fits on the defensive end, making Miller’s 2-3 zone an effective weapon.
“We had him on the wing of a 2-3 zone so he’s closing out on really good shooters here at Covenant, disrupting them and taking away the idea of a shot let alone taking a shot,” said Miller coach Scott Willard. “If you can do that with your (power forward) and really keep that length on the defensive end it’s going to lead to easy buckets on the other end.”
Kofane has transformed from almost solely a defensive stopper last season to an impact player on both ends of the court, refining his offensive game to include a versatile arsenal around the rim. His emergence gives Miller three solid options up front along with Parker and Tsafack and opens things up for guards Preston Terrell and D’Andre Corbin. Both guards were all over the floor for Miller, with Corbin coming up with an early steal and lay-in as a one-man full court press in the first quarter. Terrell finished with nine points and four assists on the night.
Tsafack, a Memphis signee, had 13 points including a pair of emphatic dunks, one a one-handed flush on an alley-oop and the other a two-handed follow in the lane.
Parker, who’s headed to Maryland, finished with a team-high 18 points including the two monster 3-pointers, while Covenant’s own top scorer on the season, Sam Dale, couldn’t get his shot to fall in the first half. Dale finished with nine points, but they all came in the closing 10 minutes of the contest, and that’s well below his 21.2 ppg average.
Without anything falling for Dale, Isaac Stewart-Silver carried the load for the Eagles. Stewart-Silver poured in 20 points including four 3-pointers for Covenant. It wasn’t enough to pull Miller who led comfortably from the third quarter on, out of the 2-3 zone.
A series of turnovers as the Mavericks continued to trap also prevented Covenant from stringing together a late run to get back into the game.
“We didn’t play well, it’s not like we played well and lost,” D’Alessandro said. “We’re actually really close.”
The win boosts Miller, who plays a brutal schedule, to 7-5 on the season. Covenant falls to 10-4 and 3-1 in the VIC on the year.
