The Allen Red Devils men’s basketball team breezed by rival Neosho at home in a madhouse gym on Wednesday night, 79-51.
The Red Devils (14-5; 3-0) improved their winning streak to nine behind the shooting of Donovan Seamster, Chris Dixon and Tanner Meyer.
Dixon put Allen ahead in the opening minutes when he nailed a three but Neosho quickly stormed down the court to take a 7-3 advantage only a couple minutes later. Turnovers plagued Allen early on when they allowed bad passes to lead to easy baskets for Neosho.
After going down 7-3, the Red Devils went on a 7-0 run themselves and continued to find scoring outlets, highlighted by a pair of Chris Dixon 3-pointers as well as a Seamster trey and a pair of Meyer 3’s.
Once Allen found its stroke from three, the Red Devils built a nice lead.
“We win games not with our offense but our defense,” said Allen head coach Andy Shaw. “We had spurts of the offense being really good and spurts of it not being so good. It gets back to the defense and rebounding, holding our opponents to 53 points, 23 in the second half.”
Allen led Neosho at halftime, 39-28.
The Red Devils extended their lead after halftime, knocking down a plethora of 3-pointers. While Dixon, Seamster and Meyer continued to hit threes, Eimon Galloway, Brycen Dean, Max Cheap and Nick Whittick all connected on triples after the break.
It was a scoring entourage for the Red Devils once they settled in for the second half and led by as many as 31 points in the final 20 minutes.
“We have a lot of different offenses that we can go to with this veteran group,” said Shaw. “A lot of times they are able to execute on the fly. If I tell them our verbiage, it carries over from play to play. They executed well and shared the ball well. Neosho’s a tough team and we made some shots. We made some timely ones to help us separate.”
Allen got 11 scorers involved and all 15 players who suited up saw minutes.
Dean turned it on in the second half when he hit a trio of two-point baskets, a three and a free throw for 10 of his team-high 14 points. Dixon had 13 points and Meyer registered 11. Dixon and Meyer each knocked down a trio of three’s while Dixon went five-of-nine from the floor. Brayden Thompson led on the boards with10 rebounds.
“It was a total team effort, I thought everyone stepped up and made plays there in the second half to separate the game,” Shaw said. “Between Chris, Tanner and Donovan, our three guards who are shooters. We hope that all three are clicking, they’re competitors.”
Allen’s defense was able to create 17 turnovers on Neosho’s offense while also snatching eight steals in the process. The Red Devils outrebounded the Panthers, 43 to 39. Allen shot a mark of 45.3% from the floor while Neosho made only 27.1% of its shot attempts.
The Red Devils travel to Fort Scott on Saturday for a 4 p.m. tip-off.
