Blue Devils beat Paragould

Blue Devils beat Paragould

West Memphis cruises to home win over Rams

By Billy Woods WM School District Last year the Blue Devils carved out a niche as an explosive third-quarter team.

This season, it’s something quite different, and head coach Marcus Brown is looking to tweak it.

On Friday night at Lehr Arena, the Blue Devils had no trouble dismantling Paragould, 53-31, but it hasn’t always been that easy for Brown’s squad at home this season.

“We’ve been doing excellent on the road this season,” said Brown, whose club improves to 15-5 overall and 3-3 in the 5A-East Conference. “We just seem to play with more focus on the road because there are fewer distractions. So what we’re trying to do is eliminate the distractions that come with playing at home. We have not played nearly as well at home this season as we have on the road.”

The Blue Devils followed up their big win at Jonesboro three days previously with another solid effort behind dogged perimeter defense and dominance on the boards.

West Memphis pounded Paragould (6-10,0-5) on the glass 26-13 even though junior forward Chris Moore didn’t play at all in the fourth quarter.

The much smaller Rams had no offensive options inside against the Blue Devils and had to roll the dice on three-point shooting. Ten of Paragould’s 11 field-goal attempts in the third quarter were treys.

The Rams hit just one.

For the game, the visitors sank 7 of 25 (28 percent) from three-point range.

“We got off to a bit of a slow start, but I think we had some carryover from the Jonesboro game,” Brown added. “We picked it up defensively.”

Helping out matters was the floor game of senior point guard Cavin Paige, who despite just 6 points, dished for 9 assists against 1 turnover.

“Another great floor game by Big Daddy,” said Brown.

Paragould’s slow-paced tactics required some patience by the Blue Devils, who utilized two huge runs to pull away from the Rams.

With the score tied 14-14 in the early moments of the second quarter, Brown ordered his troops into a fullcourt press, which forced six Paragould turnovers in the stanza and it resulted in a 12-0 run that gave the hosts a 26-14 cushion at halftime.

“We tried to get (Paragould) out of their comfort zone a bit,” Brown explained. “We wanted to get them running and jumping a bit. We let their best shooter (Cole Doke, who scored a game-high 17 points) get way too comfortable catching and shooting the ball. We just weren’t engaged.”

West Memphis followed

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that up with the spurt that put Paragould away. The Blue Devils scored the final 13 points of the third quarter to take a 43-19 lead into the final eight minutes. Although it’s rather difficult to force turnovers against a slow-paced team like Paragould, the Blue Devils turned the Rams over 17 times, which delighted the Blue Devil mentor.

“We looked good in the press and it turned into some easy baskets for us on the other end,” Brown said.

Moore dazzled the crowd with a couple of thunderous dunks, one of which came on the other end of an alley-oop pass from Paige,. Moore scored 14 points and had 5 rebounds.

Reserve Deon Williams, who is beginning to gain the trust of Brown, provided 7 points. Jamal Macklin also added 6 points and senior Terry Burgess had 5. West Memphis hits the road Tuesday night to play at Greene County Tech.

In just three quarters of action, Chris Moore (2) scored a team-high 14 points.

Photo by Billy Woods