Going up with authority
Little Rock Fair’s Mikalen Hawkins dunks the ball during the third quarter of Friday’s 46-36 victory over Little Rock Parkview.
LITTLE ROCK FAIR 46, LITTLE ROCK PARKVIEW 36
Little Rock Fair Coach Charlie Johnson admitted it’s tough to get a read on his team at times, but gauging his War Eagles will be the least of his worries if they continue to churn out defensive efforts like the one they put forth against Little Rock Parkview on Friday.
Fair forced 15 turnovers and made life miserable for the Patriots on defense to roll to a 46-36 victory in a key 6A/5A-4 battle in front of a huge crowd at War Eagle Gymnasium.
Senior forward Mickael Foust scored a game-high 20 points and pulled down 12 rebounds for Fair (19-4, 9-3), which won for the fifth consecutive time while creating a logjam atop the league standings. The victory puts Fair in a four-way tie for first place with Parkview, Little Rock Hall and Little Rock Christian with one week left in the regular season. Senior forward Deaveon Bankston added 11 points for the War Eagles.
“That was a good win because we needed that one bad,” Johnson said. “It’s just so hard to understand these guys though. During the last two days of practice, they were acting like they were mad at each other. But they showed me something [Friday night], especially on defense. They really got after it.”
The War Eagles forced Parkview to shoot just 26 percent (17 of 50) for the game and held their own on the glass despite being significantly undersized.
“It was just one of those nights,” Parkview Coach Al Flanigan said. “They jumped in that man-to-man and got up in us. And then we knuckled under, backed up and stopped being aggressive.
“That was the whole key to the game. We’ve just got to get better.”
Senior center Ethan Henderson scored 13 points while junior guard Allen Flanigan had 11 for Parkview (17-7, 9-3), whose 36 points were a season low.
The teams went back and forth over the first eight minutes, and at one point exchanged dunks on three possessions in a row. But Fair turned up its defensive intensity in the second quarter and didn’t allow Parkview to score a single point. The Patriots went 0 of 8 from the floor and turned the ball over seven times to fall into a 19-10 deficit at halftime.
Fair, which finished the night 17-of-41 shooting (41 percent), extended its lead to as many as 13 points in the second half and seemingly had an answer every time Parkview tried to make a run. The Patriots did claw within 40-32 after Flanigan’s steal and lay-up with 2:12 left in the game, but Foust responded with a floater on the other end to essentially close the door on a potential comeback.
“When we play defense the way we teach it, we do a good job,” Johnson said. “In this one, they did a great job.”