Tigers roll past McDonald County at home
NEVADA, Mo. -- Amid rumors of a physical altercation outside the high school, the Nevada Tigers varsity basketball team found themselves with a much easier task ahead of them than originally expected Friday night. Unbeknownst to fans inside Wynn Gymnasium, reports surfaced during the Tigers' 48-27 defeat of the McDonald County Mustangs of some sort of physical altercation in the parking lot of the high school, but no details were available at press time.
Meanwhile, on the court, the Tigers had come into the contest expecting a close battle that could have gone either way as both teams came into the night struggling. Though leading scorer Ross Wolfe was shut down almost completely in the contest, the Mustangs fell behind early and were never really able to recover.
As they have been known to do throughout the career of head coach John McNeley, the Tigers played solid defense all night long and McDonald County was never really able to get much of anything going and quickly found itself in a 26-16 halftime hole after trailing by just four after the game's first eight minutes.
Nothing seemed to go right for the Mustangs in the second half and just the opposite held true for the Tigers as they were nearly able to go on cruise control throughout the final 16 minutes, eventually rolling their way to the 21-point victory. As a team, neither side shot well in the game, however, and Nevada got the better of it while shooting just 32 percent for the game compared to McDonald County's 27 percent.
McDonald County came into the contest at 3-11 on the year and hungry for a win -- much like Nevada, which came into the night at 4-7 -- but was ultimately unable to find any kind of answer for anything Nevada's defense brought onto the court.
Nevada's offense came from a somewhat unlikely source as sophomores Joseph Ferry and Kyle "Bubba" Banes took over after Wolfe's slow offensive night. Ferry finished the night leading all scorers with 18 points while Banes put up 10, giving Nevada's two starting sophomores more points than the entire McDonald County team between them.
With that win, the Tigers improved their overall record to 5-7 on the year while dropping the Mustangs to 3-12 and are set to get back into action on Tuesday when they head to Bolivar to take on the Liberators in a varsity/JV doubleheader. Start time for the JV contest has yet to be announced.