Post Photo by Chris Siers Maki Fleming skies above the Cornersville defense and goes up for two. He finished with eight points for the Vikings.
By Chris Siers
csiers@bedfordcountypost.com
CORNERSVILLE — Viking coach Robbie Davis had a game plan of establishing a press early on in Tuesday night’s non-district matchup at Cornersville.
The plan worked.
The Vikings (2-6) pressed the Bulldogs (1-7) for much of the first half, built a double digit lead and never looked back in the 65-31 blowout victory.
“We knew if we got the pace going in our direction, we might have a pretty good shot tonight,” Davis said.
For much of the season so far, the Vikings have relied on the scoring efforts of Maki Fleming and Landon Lovvorn to carry the Purple and Gold’s offense.
Against Cornersville, after building a double-digit, first-half lead, Community was able to work the entirety of its bench onto the floor and 12 of the 13 players penciled their name in the scoring column.
“Most of the guys we’ve got have been playing. We’ve been playing 12 or 13 guys a night. The experience is starting to get there. We’ve got a lot of short and quick guys who can get up and down pretty fast. We thought if we can get it going our direction and get a few shots early, we can force them to play catch up. Fortunately, it worked pretty,” Davis said.
Community edged the Bulldogs out to a 15-12 lead in the first quarter, but it was a 16-2 run in the second quarter that blew the game wide open.
After holding Cornersville to two in the second, the Vikes went back to work and posted another lop-sided quarter and went on a 14-3 tear in the third quarter.
In the third period, Austin Sticker scored six of his game-high 12 points.
The trend continued into the fourth, despite Cornersville rallying for 14 points around four made treys in the period.
Community continued to spread the offense around and in the final quarter, six Vikings scored.
“For seven games now, we’ve had two guys carry us. Maki and Landon have been scoring high double digits and the rest have been scoring two, three or four points. There has to be three to five guys contribute on a nightly basis. Tonight it was nice to see guys put the ball in the basket and wanting to shoot the ball. They were being aggressive on the offensive end and wanted to go score,” Davis said.
Stickler led all scorers with 12 points, but Joshua Powers and Lovvorn both chipped in 10 as well.
Community 15 16 14 20 — 65
Cornersville 12 2 3 14 — 31
Community: Austin Stickler 12, Joshua Powers 10, Landon Lovvorn 10, Landon Berman 9, Maki Fleming 8, Zachary Leathers 3, Gunnar McGowan 3, Hunter Hill 2, Judd O’Neal 2, Charlie Haskins 2, Jaxon Williams 2, Jonathan Lawsell 2.
Cornersville: Christian Finney 11, Kale Adcox 8, Canaan Bennett 6, Gage Lovell 4, Levi Mitchell 2.
3-Point goals: Cornersville (6): Finney 3, Bennett 2, Adcox; Community (5): Powers 2, McGowan, Leathers, Berman.
Halftime score: Community 31, Cornersville 14.
