January 22, 2014
Six Puxico players finish in double digits in 69-64 win against Dexter boys
PUXICO, Mo. - The Puxico Indians varsity boys basketball team didn't experience a letdown about 24 hours after securing arguably its biggest victory of the season Monday night when it beat Twin Rivers 80-66. Puxico continued its strong midseason play with a 69-64 home win against the Dexter Bearcats Tuesday night at Arnold Ryan Gymnasium...
PUXICO, Mo. - The Puxico Indians varsity boys basketball team didn't experience a letdown about 24 hours after securing arguably its biggest victory of the season Monday night when it beat Twin Rivers 80-66.
Puxico continued its strong midseason play with a 69-64 home win against the Dexter Bearcats Tuesday night at Arnold Ryan Gymnasium.
"It's two very good wins for us," Puxico coach Jon Simpher, who has coached his 10-5 squad to six victories in their last eight games, said. "Luckily, we are on a row."
Just about everyone who played for Puxico against Dexter contributed in a big way offensively Tuesday. All six Puxico players who scored tallied at least 10 points.
"We were able to balance everything," Simpher said. "We had five guys in double digits last night and tonight we were once again a very unselfish team. If one guy is not scoring the next guy will step up. It leads to a lot of guys getting a lot of points."
Austin Teichman led Puxico's offense with 15 points. Zach Tucker finished just one behind with 14 points. Garrett Payne, Corey Pratt, Tim Hancock, and Seth Luttrull each tallied 10 points for the Indians.
"We came into the game really wanting to take Tucker away," Dexter coach Rob Nichols said. "We had also talked about Teichman and Payne. They've got several guys who can do their scoring. They've got a talented group."
The Bearcats never trailed by more than 11 even with facing the daunting task of trying to stop the Puxico offense that kept coming from everywhere.
The Indians jumped out to an early 6-0 lead less than two minutes into the first quarter and increased its lead to 16-8 in the final minute of the first period.
Dexter came storming back with the first eight points of the second quarter to tie things up at 16-16 with six minutes left in the first half.
Puxico led 25-24 at halftime. The Indians outscored Dexter by 10 in the first five minutes of the second half to pad its lead to 41-30 with three minutes left in the third quarter.
"We had a bad start to the first half and again at the start of the second half," Nichols said. "We are the kind of team that we don't recover very well from poor starts. When you've got a younger group of guys you need to be ready at the very start because you don't always have that experience to get back in games and I just felt like those poor starts hurt us."
Dexter extended its defense and applied more ball pressure after falling behind 11. The Bearcats quickly cut the deficit to 45-41 with 33 seconds left in the third quarter.
"We switched defenses and guarded better," Nichols said. "We got to their shooters a little bit, but I felt like what really hurt us was all those 50-50 balls we couldn't get on rebounds and loose balls. Puxico got all of those and in close games that's the difference most of the time."
Puxico extended its lead back to 10 at 53-43 in the first 90 seconds of the fourth quarter. Dexter cut the deficit to six twice before Puxico went back on top by 11 at 62-51 with 3:50 left in regulation.
The Indians led 64-54 with 2:12 remaining. The Bearcats won the final two minutes 10-5 to trim the margin of defeat to five.
Puxico hit three of its four 3-pointers in the second half.
"Our game plan coming in was to try to get the ball inside and use our size," Simpher said. "Then they started taking it away and luckily our outside game was effective the second half. We weren't shooting the ball the greatest from the outside the first half, but we were taking good shots. We gave them confidence at halftime and told them 'to keep shooting.' They started falling the second half."
Ethan Flowers matched Puxico's four treys. He tallied four of Dexter's six 3-pointers on his way to a team-high 21 points.
Cole Renken had a 2-pointer in every quarter for the Bearcats. He finished with 16 points.
D.J. Dowdy finished strong for the Bearcats. He tallied 10 of his 14 points after halftime.
Dexter won the junior varsity game against Puxico 61-54.
Puxico returns to action Friday when it plays at state-ranked Bernie.
The Bearcats will have a week to prepare for Round 2. Dexter will host New Madrid County Central Friday before it plays Puxico again next Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the first round of the SCAA varsity boys basketball team at the Bearcat Event Center. Dexter is seeded No. 4 and Puxico is seeded fifth.
"We knew coming into it we were going to see them twice," Nichols said. "We've got some things we need to cleanup. They are a team we can compete with, but we've got to rebound the basketball and get those 50-50 balls. That's huge for us right now."
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Varsity: Puxico 69, Dexter 64
DHS 10 14 17 23 - 64
PHS 16 9 22 22 - 69
DEXTER (64) - Noah Kronk 2, D.J. Dowdy 14, Peyton Pollock 4, Austin Chesser 7, Ethan Flowers 21, Cole Renken 16. FG 25, FT 10/15, F 20. (3-pointers: Dowdy 1, Chesser 1, Flowers 4. Fouled out: none)
PUXICO (69) - Garrett Payne 10, Corey Pratt 10, Austin Teichman 15, Tim Hancock 10, Seth Luttrull 10, Zack Tucker 14. FG 26, FT 13/19, F 14. (3-pointers: Pratt. Fouled out: Tucker)
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Junior Varsity: Dexter 61, Puxico 54
DHS 15 15 16 15 - 61
PHS 8 21 9 16 - 54
DEXTER (61) - Peyton Tinnin 2, Jason Jarrell 19, Jacob Pedigo 25, Alex Whitehead 5, Ryan Mayo 4, Addison Moore 6. FG 20, FT 19/28, F 10. (3-pointers: Jarrell 1, Whitehead 1. Fouled out: none)
PUXICO (54) - Jeremy Wegener 5, Sam Kilbreth 6, Nathan Dare 9, Brad Clark 3, Jordan Burch 12, Chris Dunivan 19. FG 20, FT 4/8, F 20. (3-pointers: Wegener 1, Kilbreth 2, Dare 2, Dunivan 5. Fouled out: none)
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