Balanced Falcons blast Prairie View A&M 75-41

Grant Parker and Evan Washington, Air Force’s leading scorers, haven’t gotten much help recently.

But they got plenty of it on Tuesday night as Air Force blew out Prairie View A&M 75-41 in front of an announced crowd of 739 at Clune Arena.

While Parker and Washington scored 14 and nine points, respectively, eight other players scored, including four who had seven or more points. Freshmen Michael Lyons and Mike Fitzgerald had 12 apiece, sophomore Taylor Stewart had nine and senior Mike McLain chipped in seven.

“It’s great,” said Washington, who along with Parker had scored 72 of the Falcons’ 109 points in their previous two games. “It takes the pressure off us offensively.”

“It doesn’t make us two-dimensional,” coach Jeff Reynolds added.

Air Force improved to 5-2 with what might have been its most complete performance to date. The Falcons made 28-of-53 shots from the floor, including 11-of-25 from 3-point range. And of their 28 baskets, 22 came off assists — “You’re gonna win a lot of games when you do that,” Reynolds said. Air Force also made just eight turnovers.

Senior guard Avery Merriex led the way with seven assist and no turnovers.

Defensively, Air Force harassed Prairie View A&M (3-5) into 26.2 percent shooting from the floor, including 20.0 percent from beyond the 3-point arc — 15.0 and 13.5 percentage points, respectively, below its season averages.

“I can only recall one 3 that wasn’t contested,” Reynolds said.

Air Force closed the first half on a 13-2 run to take a 36-20 advantage into the break.

The Falcons then scored on their first six possessions of the second half — including 3-pointers from Stewart and Lyons — to push their lead to 49-24.

And there was no letting up, as happened in the Dec. 2 victory over North Carolina Central. The Falcons led by as many as 36 late in the game.

 “It’s the first time I can remember we’ve played a full 40 minutes — where we’ve actually gone out, executed the whole time and been focused,” McLain said. “Sometimes we were more focused than others, but we never lost focus, which was good.

“Definitely a step forward."