AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo.—Grant Parker scored 14 points as Air Force held Prairie View to a season low and beat the Panthers 75-41 Tuesday night.
Even better, Mitch Lyons and Mike Fitzgerald added career-high 12 points each for Air Force (5-2), which has won all three meetings between the two schools.
“It doesn’t make us two-dimensional when Grant Parker and Evan Washington have support,” Air Force coach Jeff Reynolds said. “We’ve got players that can shoot the ball.”
Fitzgerald was 4 of 6 on 3-pointers and the Falcons were 11 of 25 from beyond the arc.
“The coach has confidence in me and if I have the open shots, he wants me to take them,” Fitzgerald said. “I missed my first two 3s, but didn’t miss another shot.”
Al Richman led Prairie View (3-5), which has lost three straight, with 12 points. Leading scorer Darnell Hugee was held to two points on 1-of-3 shooting.
“One of our focuses tonight was to really pressure the ball,” Reynolds said of his defensive success. “I can only recall one corner 3-pointer they made that we didn’t get out on.”
The Panthers were held to a season low 41 points. Their previous low was 51 against Iowa.
“We didn’t have four starters here tonight,” Prairie View coach Byron Richman said. “We still didn’t do what we were supposed to do. We didn’t guard, we didn’t cut hard and Air Force did a great job of rotating the ball and making our guys work.”
They are 11-34 in non-conference games over the past three years.
Prairie View hurt itself with 29 percent shooting and seven turnovers in the first half, and didn’t improve in the initial five minutes after the break, making only 2 of 7 shots. Meanwhile, Mike McLain had five points for Air Force over the same stretch, and Evan Washington’s two-fisted dunk put the Falcons up 51-24 with 13:38 left in the game.
The Falcons extended their lead to 56-26 after a short jumper by Todd Fletcher. Richman’s 3-pointer with 8:34 remaining got Prairie View A&M as close as 59-34, but no closer.
Parker had his 14 by halftime and Air Force led 36-20. A layup by Hugee and a 3-pointer by Richman gave the Panthers their last lead of the first half, 9-5, but it was erased by an 11-0 run that began with Parker’s 3-pointer.
Hugee received a technical for arguing a non-call with 6:06 left in the first half.
“That team is a much better team than what you saw tonight,” Reynolds said. “They went through what we experienced in our loss to Northern Colorado when the ball didn’t go in the basket when they had some decent looks.”
