Allen —  

With the Class A playoffs a week away, Thursday night’s home doubleheader with Class 3A Davis was question-and-answer time for the Allen boys and girls basketball teams.

And while their ugly 60-41 loss to to the visiting Lady Wolves left the Lady Mustangs with plenty of questions, the Allen boys had all the answers in a shocking 73-41 blowout of a Davis squad that entered the night with a 10-5 record. The loss dropped the Allen girls (ranked No. 11 in Class A) to 18-4 on the season while the 14th-ranked Mustangs won their 11th in a row to improve to 20-2 heading into Tuesday’s season finale at home against New Lima.

“This was a good game for us,” Allen boys coach Greg Mills said after Thursday’s victory. “We wanted to see what we were made of, and the guys played well. Davis is physical and athletic.”

Both Allen squads will open the playoffs late next week at home against Achille in a two-school district tournament.

BOYS

Allen 73, Davis 42

The Mustangs never trailed, but they led just 13-11 heading to the second quarter after Davis scored the final five points in the first period in a span of 24 seconds — the last three on a 3-pointer in transition by Chance Griffin with 19 seconds left. But Griffin’s trey was the only one for the Wolves in 18 attempts, and Allen blew the game open by dominating the middle two quarters.

A 3-pointer by Lane Mills from the left wing off a dish from center Brett Edens with 6:56 left in the second period ignited an impressive 20-5 run over the next 5:40 that put the game away. Grant Rowsey, who scored 17 points despite spending most of the game in foul trouble, added a lay-in off a feed from Conner Johnson on an inbounds play 32 seconds after Rowsey’s trey to make it 20-13, then Edens muscled in for a layup at the 5:57 mark to extend the lead to nine.

Rowsey took a pass from Allen point guard Brady Caldwell and drove to the basket for another layup, then a putback of his own miss by Edens pushed the Mustangs’ lead to 26-13. Mills drained a jumper from the free throw line off a feed from Johnson with 5:08 left in the period, and the lead swelled to 15 (31-16) on a trey by Johnson off one of Caldwell’s five first-half assists 43 seconds later.

A fast-break layup by Caldwell at the 2:25 mark and another by Zayne Erickson off a Caldwell assist 32 seconds later made it 35-16, and the Mustangs took a 38-18 lead to the locker room when Caldwell took a cross-court pass from Mills and drained a 3-pointer from the left wing with 1:06 left in the half. Allen had scored on 11 of 13 second-quarter possessions at that point; Davis, meanwhile, hit just 3-of-14 shots in the period and 8-for-33 in the first two quarters.

Mills put another dagger in the Wolves with a 3-pointer (his fourth of five in the game) off Caldwell’s sixth of nine assists in the game just 10 seconds into the second half, and the lead swelled to 50-22 on Caldwell’s putback of his own miss with 4:25 left in the third quarter. Erickson capped the period with a three-point play with 10.7 seconds left to send the Mustangs to the final eight minutes with a 60-34 lead.

Mills’ third 3-pointer of the game with 4:52 to play pushed Allen’s lead to 67-38, and it swelled to 31 just 42 seconds later when Caldwell brought the house down with a behind-the-back pass to Rowsey for a layup to put the Mustangs up by 31.

Mills scored a game-high 21 points on 8-for-15 shooting, grabbed nine rebounds to just miss a double-double and also dished out three assists. Rowsey hit 7-of-11 shots despite spending most of the third quarter and a good chunk of the second on the bench and finished with 17 points, six rebounds and two steals. Caldwell scored 10 points and added nine assists to also flirt with a double-double, and he added five rebounds and two steals in the win.

Erickson did a solid job off the bench in relief of Edens and Rowsey, finishing with nine points and nine rebounds to just miss his first career double-double; Johnson had four assists, two steals and two rebounds to go with eight points, and Edens scored six points and added five rebounds, four assists and two blocked shots for the Mustangs, who hit 30-of-56 shots while limiting the Wolves to 19 field goals in 63 attempts.

Greg Mills credited a new defense — a match-up zone, or “yo-yo” — with neutralizing the Davis running game and forcing the Wolves to take the majority of their shots from the perimeter.

“We had been playing man-to-man all year, and tonight we tried something new,” Mills explained. “The Wolves) are so fast we couldn’t guard them man-to-man. The guys stuck to the game plan.”

Alex Hetherington scored 18 points (14 in the second half, including 10 in the third quarter) on 9-of-13 shooting in the loss, but the other four Davis starters were a combined 10-for-38. The Mustangs also outrebounded the Wolves by a solid 43-31 and had five players with at least five rebounds in the win.

GIRLS

Davis 60, Allen 41

Davis (11-5) scored the game’s first nine points and finished the opening quarter on an impressive 16-0 run fueled by eight Allen turnovers — including six in a row at one point — to take a 26-4 lead heading to the second. Kendal Rogers was the big gun for the Lady Wolves, hitting 11-of-12 shots and scoring 25 of her team’s 41 first-half points, including 16 in the first quarter.

Rogers scored her team’s final eight points in the opening period in a span of just 50 seconds, with all four baskets coming after takeaways by Davis’s pressure defense. She followed her huge first quarter by hitting all four of her shots in the second, and the Davis lead swelled to 39-8 on a fast-break layup by Bailey Knapp with 2:26 left in the quarter.

The Lady Mustangs got as close as 22 in the third quarter, at 41-19 on a 3-pointer by Aussie Riddle at the 6:20 mark, but they didn’t get closer until late in the fourth quarter, when the starters for both teams were long gone. 

Rogers scored only three second-half points but recorded four of her five steals in the game after the break, and she added eight rebounds to help Davis to a 38-27 advantage on the boards. Deidre Carr and Knapp added nine points apiece, with Carr grabbing three of the Lady Wolves’ 13 steals. 

Marissa Prentice scored 13 points for Allen, but 10 came in the second half with the issue no longer in doubt. Riddle added nine points for the Lady Mustangs, who hit just 16-of-52 shots while Davis was connecting on 21-of-45 — including 12-of-16 from Rogers.