Chuck Benson postgame interview

Antoine Davis postgame interview

BREVARD, N.C. – Carson-Newman (16-6, 13-5 South Atlantic Conference) won its fifth consecutive contest with an 89-67 victory over Brevard (4-18, 4-13 SAC) in a Monday night makeup game for the Eagles at Boshamer Gym. 

The 2014 senior class and Chuck Benson are an unbeaten 8-0 against Brevard.  Sawyer William (Owenton, Ky.) reset his career high for points with 17 and made field goals with seven.  Carson Brooks (Knoxville, Tenn.) went over 10 boards for the first time in his career collecting 11 caroms. 

The offensive star of the night though was Antoine Davis (Rustburg, Va.).  The senior forward dropped 26 on the Tornados.  Davis has scored 20 points against the Tornados in every game of his career.  He's crested 25 points on three occasions against Brevard. 

"He has the kind of offensive explosiveness that he can go zero to 60 in two seconds," Benson said. "He was very aggressive in the second half and really didn't settle.  He just got it to the rim and shot a high volume of high percentage shots."

Davis finished 10-of-15 from the field.  The Eagles held Brevard to 26.7 percent shooting from the field and 23.8 percent shooting from three in the first half en route to a 32-22 halftime lead.  The Eagles outscored Brevard 24-9 in the final four minutes of the first half and the opening four minutes of the second half to jump to an 18-point edge. 

"We knew that they were one of the better teams in this league at scoring points and scoring points at a high percentage," Benson said. "I thought our defense was good enough - and our offense certainly good enough - to help push us to the win. It was a really a well-rounded performance."

Brevard cut Carson-Newman's lead to eight as Dominique Pickett buried six consecutive threes.  However a technical on Brevard head coach Lee Burgess halted the Tornados run.  The Eagles countered with a 10-2 spurt following that moment to put the game away. 

Pickett finished with 29 points, the most a player has scored against Carson-Newman this season.

"Pickett is a very capable scorer," Benson said. "But we wanted to limit Moose and what he does around the basket.  We were willing to live with Pickett's high volume of threes at the expense of keeping it out of Moose's hands."

The Eagles held Darius Moose 12 points below his average.  The junior finished with eight. 

Ish Sanders (Cleveland, Tenn.) wound up with 18 points and Jared Johnson had 13 to round out C-N's quartet of double digit scorers. 

Carson-Newman shot 73 percent from the field in the second half, which marks the third half of basketball where the Eagles have fired at a 70 percent clip or better this season.  The Eagles finished at 63 percent from the field for the game – the highest field goal percentage of the Chuck Benson era and the third time the Eagles have hit 60 percent or more of their shots this season. 

The Eagles return home Wednesday night for a rematch with Anderson.  Pregame coverage on the Eagle Sports Network begins at 7:45 p.m. on 106.3 ESPN Radio The Zone (WPFT-FM, Sevierville) and online at cneagles.com/live. 

-CN-