VIDEO: Chuck Benson Interview
JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – King (2-0) drilled long two after long two while Carson-Newman (-(1-1) suffered through two separate five-minute field goal droughts in a 77-66 King win Sunday afternoon in Holt Fieldhouse.
The loss is Carson-Newman's first on the home floor since Queens tallied a 63-62 win over the Eagles on Jan. 13, 2021 – snapping a 10-game home win streak.
"You give them full credit for their shotmaking," Carson-Newman head men's basketball coach Chuck Benson said. "There are certain things we're willing to live with, and if they are willing to take a high volume of long twos over hands, we'll oblige. Credit to them, they made tough twos and that's what it was. I thought we improved our overall defense in the second half."
King jumped out to an 8-1 lead in the first 105 seconds of the game after a pair of 28-foot threes from Michael Mays. The Tornado surged to a 13-point halftime edge, 44-31, with a 6-0 run before the break, aided by a six minute stretch between buckets for the Eagles.
"There are certain play types that can mess with you," Benson said. "I thought Mays, and I'm going to call them what they are, took some stupid shots. Mays making stupid shots confounded our team. But, the credit goes to him because he made them. We don't take those shots. We don't see those shots. I don't know if we ever recovered from that (him making multiple 25+ foot threes) to be honest."
Mays finished with a game-high 21 points. He was 5-for-8 from long range. Brandon Lamberth was the only other player to hit double-digits for the Tornado. He finished with 15, including 11 in the second half.
King went 8-for-19 from long range (42.1 percent) and knocked down 44.1 percent of its shots from the field.
Meanwhile, Carson-Newman made 40.4 percent of its shots. C-N had three streaks where it missed five straight shots. The Eagles finished the game 1-of-6 from the field.
"We got the ball where we wanted to get it," Benson said. "We not only got the ball inside, we got the ball into the paint. I wish we had made all of our interior shots. I'm not frustrated by the offense because we got the ball where we wanted it. If we go back and were to chart shot types of both these teams tonight, our types were much better. They are the ones that line up analytically with winning. We just didn't make them. They rolled the dice with shots that you probably shouldn't take and it paid off for them."
The Tornado outrebounded the Eagles 44-30, the largest rebounding margin C-N has given up since Tusculum was plus-12 on the glass in a 72-68 C-N win on Jan. 15, 2020.
"King earned this win," Benson said. "They did not take us out of what we wanted to do, we got what we wanted, we just couldn't capitalize. This doesn't come down to their shot-making or their rebounding, it comes down to our shot missing. At the end of the day, this was about our inability to make shots at the rim."
Tripp Davis (Nashville, Tenn.) and Bryant Thomas (Charlotte, N.C.) were C-N's lone double-digit scorers. Davis scored 15 to go along with four boards and three steals. Thomas had 11 with five boards and a trio of blocks.
Carson-Newman opens SAC play Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at Tusculum. Coverage on the Eagle Sports Network begins at 7:15 with the AEC Countdown to Tipoff on Mountain Sports 106.3 (WPFT-FM, Sevierville) and online at cneagles.com/live.
