12-15-06
BY JACK BULLOCK
VIENNA - It took just a three-minute stretch in the third quarter to separate the host Vienna Eagles from their conference nemesis Meridian in a battle for first place in the SEC Friday night.

Following a free throw by Meridian’s Malcolm Larry that put the Bobcats ahead 32-31 with 5:17 left, these Eagles took off.

Scoring 12-consecutive points in five possessions in succession, Vienna took command of both the game and the South Egypt Conference race.

Getting a team high 17 points from Kyle Willis and an 11 point/12 rebound effort from 6-foot-11 junior Brett Thompson, Vienna left the Bobcats wondering what happened in a 59-43 win.

Holding the high-powered Bobcats to just 18-of-61 from the field while granting the visitors few second opportunities, Vienna improved to 9-1 overall and 3-0 with a strangle hold of the top league spot.

Meridian’s 6-foot-5 junior Marland Johnson scored 19 points in a losing effort. However his foul problems that developed quickly in the third quarter paralleled the Vienna scoring burst.

Having to leave the game for the bench with his third personal foul Johnson watched from the pine as his teammates couldn’t keep the Eagles from spreading their wings.

By the time Johnson returned to the game, Vienna had stretched the advantage to 46-35 heading to the final quarter.

But the story of the game wasn’t the inside scoring of Thompson or the foul problems of Johnson. It was the outside shooting of Vienna.

Drilling home seven 3-pointers in the game that included five in the first half, the Eagles opened up the Meridian defense and set things up for a strong second half run inside by Thompson.

The overall result was a message sending game to the rest of Southern Illinois that Vienna is for real after knocking off the recently named top-seed of the Eldorado Holiday Tournament.

“Our 3-point shooting has been great all year and tonight we hit some of them early in the game to get us going,” said Vienna mentor Rick Metcalf. “We can go 10 deep and we have some kids that could start at a lot of places but they came off the our bench and did a great job. Overall it was a good team effort.”

From the opening tap, it looked like a war was ready to take place and for the first 19 minutes it was a close battle.

Vienna got a good offensive run going in the first quarter. Opening up from the outside, guards Willis, Isaiah Cornelius and Derek Trovillion connected on outside shots.

An 18 footer from the left corner at the 2:06 mark put Vienna up 12-7.

However Meridian’s Jeremiah Oats and Chalen Payne quickly made up that discrepancy.

After Oats scored in transition on a Payne steal, Payne found the ball in his possession heading up the court following another Vienna turnover as the clock wound down in the opening quarter.

His running one-handed 3-point attempt from 30 feet found the mark to even things at 12

Vienna kept to its strategy of taking the open shot from the outside against the sagging Meridian defense.

Willis and Cornelius each dropped bombs in the second quarter from long range.

As Meridian began to struggle offensively, Vienna put together an 11-2 run finished by Cornelius from the top of the arc with 1:25 before the break.

Meridian missed ten shots in this five-minute period but behind seven points from Johnson in the second quarter, the Bobcats trailed just 28-25 at intermission.

“I wanted to pick the tempo up tonight a little bit. How many times do you ever hear a guy saying that against Meridian? But we wanted to do that and we got them ‘up and down’ a little bit,” said Vienna head coach Rick Metcalf. “We did a good job of getting the ball to the people who needed it.”

Meridian’s Malcolm Larry scored twice in the lane for Coach Mandrell’s club and after a pair of free throws by Johnson the Bobcats led 31-30.

But picking up three fouls in just under two minutes of game clock, Johnson’s trip to the bench spelled the end for Meridian.

Trovillion grabbed a rebound and his bucket while being fouled by Johnson at 4:17 turned into a game changing three-point play.

This score ignited these Eagles as they quickly left Meridian behind.

“Without him in the game then we don’t have anyone to contend with Thompson,” Mandrell said talking about Johnson’s foul problems. “There was a stretch there in the third quarter where it kind of got away from us.”

Thompson scored on a pass from Trovillion and Dennis Watts stepped off the Eagles bench to drill home 3-pointer that forced Coach Mandrell to burn a timeout at 39-32 with 2:30 showing on the third quarter clock.

Thompson scored seven of his eleven points in the final two quarters.

“Watts came off the bench for us and he has been a starter for us in the past but he is our sixth man now,” added Metcalf. “He did a really good job for us and hit some big shots.”

Trovillion ended the quarter with another trifecta and a pair of free throws.

Meridian made no inroads on the Vienna lead as they fell to 7-4 overall and 2-1 in the SEC after what turned into a lackluster performance for a team that could have taken over the conference lead with a win.

“They (Vienna) hit their shots tonight and they have some kids that can shoot the ball,” said Mandrell. “They are pretty well rounded, I’ll tell ya they’re a good team. They had some kids make some shots that we didn’t mind seeing them shoot the ball. We knew Thompson and Trovillion have been their top scorers but the other ones, to their credit, hit some shots tonight. We had trouble putting the ball in the basket tonight and sometimes you have those nights.”

Hitting just 30 percent of its overall shots and a paltry 2-of-21 from behind the arc Meridian didn’t bring much to the dance in this key league contest.

“We got out of our gameplan after we fell behind,” Mandrell explained. “We needed to chip away at their lead but we were jacking up three’s and not hitting any of them.”

Johnson led all scorers with 19 points while Malcolm Larry finished with 10 and Chalen Payne added eight for the Bobcats.

For Vienna, after Willis and Thompson, Derek Trovillion added 14 points while Watts and Cornelius checked in with eight and seven points.

Coach Metcalf saw his club hit 17-of-43 from the floor, 7-of-23 from long range.

Neither club took particular good care of the ball with 26 total turnovers (Vienna 14, Meridian 12) in a game that seemed almost anti-climactic in nature after the first one of the two meetings between the clubs ended with an Eagles triumph 68-64 in the title game of the Vienna Turkey Classic.

The final margin could have been greater if Vienna hadn’t missed seven fourth quarter free throws.

Vienna out rebounded the Bobcats 36-32 with 27 of them on the defensive end, keeping Meridian without many second chance points.

“We are 9-1 overall and 3-0 in the conference and that is right where we wanted to be,” finalized Metcalf.

Meridian (43) - Payne 1 2 0-2 8, Hamilton 0 0 0-0 0, Oats 2 0 0-0 4, Mario Larry 0 0 0-0 0, Johnson 8 0 3-5 19, Nelson 0 0 0-0 0, Jones 1 0 0-0 2, Smith 0 0 0-0 0, Malcom Larry 4 0 2-3 10.
2FG-16, 3FG-2, FT-5-10, PF-20.
Vienna (59) - Willis 3 1 8-10 17, Watts 0 1 5-8 8, Cornelius 0 2 1-4 7, Trovillion 1 3 3-4 14, Thompson 5 0 1-4 11, Stram 0 0 0-0 0, DeLaCruz 1 0 0-0 2.
2FG-10, 3FG-7, FT-18-30, PF-12.
Fouled Out - Johnson, Meridian
Technical Fouls - None.