Merced College men’s basketball dials up a win from long distance

Jose Gonzalez says the difference is all in the big men.

The consistent play of Joshua Willingham and Paul Clark in the post has opened the court for the rest of the Merced College men’s basketball team. Gonzalez, Anthony Nolen, John Zaragoza and Deonta Woodard suddenly have a little extra space that wasn’t there a season ago.

The Blue Devil shooters showed what they can do with it Tuesday night, making a season-high 16 3-pointers en route to a comfortable 85-61 victory over Gavilan at Don Reid Court. The win improved Merced to 7-3, its best start since the 2006-07 campaign.

“We just feel like we can spread the court better with two reliable big men,” Gonzalez said. “We were kind of an undersized lineup last season, so making teams have to honor the post is big. It’s allowing us shooters to really be shooters.”

Nolen (game-high 23 points) gave an early indication of what type of evening it was going to be, draining an open 3-pointer for the Blue Devils’ first bucket. Merced hardly missed out of the gate, building an 18-6 lead five minutes into the game.

Gonzalez (21 points) led the barrage, draining five of his seven 3s in the first half. Gonzalez hit three treys in consecutive trips down the court to push the Blue Devils’ lead to 48-23. Merced had trouble maintaining its defensive intensity, however, and Gavilan (2-6) closed the half with an 11-0 run.

“When you build a big lead, guys tend to ease up,” Merced coach Bill Russell said. “You not only become stagnant defensively, but you start to do it on the offensive end also. It’s not easy to turn those on and off, and there were a couple times that we let them go on runs because of it.”

But for every Gavilan run, the Blue Devils seemed to have an answer.

Willingham and Woodard balanced out the long-range barrage with the dirty work inside. Willingham finished with 11 points, 14 rebounds and three blocks while Woodard just missed a double-double with 10 points and nine boards.

That kept the Ram defense from cheating on Gonzalez and company. The sophomore hit two more big 3s to open the second half as Merced pushed its lead to 60-39. Gavilan never got back within 15 points the rest of the way.

“When we work our inside-outside game like we did tonight, we’re pretty effective,” Russell said. “I didn’t know we had that many 3s, but I thought we did a good job of finding the open man. We want to keep it that way. The guys have played very unselfishly, and it’s been a big part of our success.”

This story was originally published December 6, 2016 at 8:43 PM with the headline "Merced College men’s basketball dials up a win from long distance."