Mustangs stellar defense overwhelms Falls City

NIXON — Last season, the Nixon-Smiley Mustangs relied on their skill level and high-scoring offense to win games. This season, the Mustangs will be a bit more focused on defense and Tuesday’s 76-35 win over Falls City proved as much.

“This is what we’ve been trying to build since the start [of the season],” Mustangs’ head coach Carlton McKinney said. The coaching staff has been “trying to get our guys conditioned to play a certain way. We’ve had some really stiff competition the first five or so games and it’s really helped us.”

Nixon-Smiley, after playing a few tough non-district games including a tournament last weekend, sits at 2-4 overall. But McKinney believes those losses have been good for the team.

“Had we had a lot of success early we would not be where we needed to be,” McKinney said. “We got a few games, couple of tournaments before we head into district. This is just another step in that direction.”

Falls City scored the first bucket, going up 2-0 at the 7:11 mark. About 40 seconds later, Colby Newman assisted on a Jordan Van Auken three to give Nixon-Smiley their lead, leading to a 19-0 run before the visiting Beavers finally got another basket.

During the run, the Mustangs’ used their defense to force fast breaks as players like Jordan Lopez would convert steals to easy points.

“If we can bring the energy on the defensive end every night, I think we’ll create a lot of scoring opportunities for us and that’s what we did today,” McKinney noted.

“We’re hoping that our defense can generate 20-25 points every night,” McKinney continued. “If we can do that, I think we’ll have enough scoring to be productive.”

The Mustangs would maintain that lead for the remainder of the game.

One of the questions coming into this basketball season was who on the team will be able to replicate Sam Moore’s offensive production last year? One of the reasons behind focusing more on defense this season may be because they graduated a great offensive player, but McKinney did name a few players on the roster this season that can become a factor on the offensive end.

“[Treon Fatheree] is one of our returning top scorers,” McKinney said. “Sam [Moore] took the bulk of the load last year. We’re going to do it by committee [this season] but Treon will be our lead dog. He shoots the ball extremely well, especially when he plays defense like that. He creates opportunities for himself.”

Fatheree showed his excellence on the court, proving that he can go down low and get and-one calls and can also shoot outside jumpers. The senior forward finished the night with 17 points.

“Jordan Lopez can score for us,” McKinney mentioned, “we [also] got Jordan Van Auken that can score for us.” Lopez finished the night with eight points while Van Auken had a team-leading 26 points.

One issue Nixon-Smiley had in the first half was the amount of fouls they accumulated, especially in the first quarter. Falls City was already in the bonus with 1:01 left in the first. Although McKinney appreciates the aggressiveness, the Mustangs will need to clean up their fouls in order to have success.

“When we talk about being aggressive, we know we’re going to get some fouls early,” he said. “But we want to make sure we continue to be aggressive and just get better defensively.”

The biggest reason could be their conditioning this early in the season. McKinney explained that once his team is fully conditioned and ready to go, they’ll move their feet on defense instead of reaching or grabbing opponents.

“We’re going to keep [being aggressive],” he said, “just got to continue to get good at it.”

Nixon-Smiley travels to Poteet for a three-day tournament that started yesterday, though results to those games were unavailable before press time. The Mustangs will then play at home against Poteet on Tuesday, Dec. 13 with tipoff scheduled at 7:45 p.m.