When the Red Devil offense is running smoothly, it is quite a sight to behold.
On Wednesday night, the Red Devils’ top three scorers made the difference in securing a 81-67 home victory over Cowley County Community College.
ACC sophomore Quentin Blaue has been the attention of every opponent’s game plan ever since his scorching hot start to the season.
“Some teams have been guarding me really tight,” Blaue said. “My teammates have done a good job of ffinding a way to get me open and I am getting more used to taking contested shots.”
Sophomore DaRon Mims has picked up his offensive game in the past couple weeks to make up for the fewer opportunities that Blaue has had and has had a strong run of high-scoring games.
Sophomore Jah-Kobe Womack has been the Red Devil sixth man for the majority of the season and has been putting up high-scoring totals in his minutes as part of the team’s four-guard package. With starting forward Beau Shockley sidelined on Wednesday, Allen coach Andy Shaw decided to start his potent four-guard attack.
“It is awesome,” Allen point guard E.J. Garnes said of the four-guard look. “It gives us a speedy lineup and a lot of shooting around me. It is very difficult to guard especially when all of our scorers are in attack mode.”
With all three Red Devils’ in the starting five, the Allen offense took off.
The Red Devils built a 26-18 lead at halftime with the defense complementing its offense. A putback dunk from Ithello Cross was the offensive play of the half.
“His putback dunk was unbelievable,” Shaw said. “It was a big momentum swing for us and it got the crowd going. It led to a good spurt for us.”
Cowley County responded in the second half and cut the margin to 30-24, but then back-to-back-to-back threes built the lead to 15. Womack had two of them and Blaue had the other.
The Red Devils eventually cut the margin to just two points and it hovered around that margin until consecutive scores from Mims then two-straight three pointers by Blaue once again put the lead at 15.
“Whenever they made a run, we made one right back at them,” Shaw said. “I was proud of our guys for being resilient and stepping up and protecting home court.”
From there, the Red Devils made their foul shots down the stretch to seal the victory.
Blaue finished the game with 19 points while Mims had 17 and Womack scored 16.
“When those three are doing that, it opens up opportunities for everyone else,” Shaw said.
Garnes added 11 points, seven rebounds and five assists.
UP NEXT
Allen travels to Seward County Community College on Saturday at 8 p.m.
