Boys' basketball: F-FC grinds out win over Liberty

Fountain-Fort Carson coach Greg Williams understands his Trojans are going to have games when the shots simply do not fall. However, he still expects his players to compete relentlessly.

Fountain-Fort Carson (5-2) did just that Friday night, grinding out a 60-48 victory over Liberty in the Fairview Festival in a nonleague matchup between the two 5A Metro League squads.

“The kids competed and that’s the biggest thing,” Williams said. “As long as they compete we can be close in games. Then we’re going to be in a pretty nice situation.”

The game was played at Liberty (3-3) to help reduce travel costs for both teams.

Anthony Davis led all-scorers with 15 points and Michaud Williams chipped in with 14 as the Trojans held on for the victory after Liberty cut the Fountain-Fort Carson lead to 51-44 following a 3-pointer from Caden Nixon with 1:27 remaining.

“We’ll take anything. You don’t want it to be ugly, but a win is a win,” Davis said. “Liberty is a great team. We just need to get back to us and focus. We have a lot of young guys, so we just have to work on it.”

Liberty struggled tremendously on offense, shooting 23 percent from the field. Even so, the Lancers had a chance to cut the deficit to five points with 1:18 left after Matt Love forced a steal before missing from in close.

“When you’re 17-for-73 you’re not going to beat a lot of good teams,” said Liberty coach Ivan Chambers. “That was the issue tonight. We couldn’t put the ball in the hole. You can’t dig yourself a big hole against the defending conference champs.”

The Trojans held Liberty to only 11 points in the first half, and then Cameron Hacker ripped off three consecutive buckets to extend Fountain-Fort Carson’s halftime lead to 27-11 early in the second half.

“One thing we wanted to do is start to make a push defensively, and in the first half holding this team down to 11 points, that’s big for us for where we are at right now,” Williams said.

Nixon, who scored a team-high 12 points, helped Liberty get within eight of F-FC with a 3-pointer with 2:17 left in the third quarter. Yet Trojan sophomore Michaud Williams sucked the momentum out of the Lancer crowd with a corner 3 to put Fountain-Fort Carson up 36-25.

“I am happy for our guys,” Davis said. “Michaud Williams, a sophomore, stepped up and hit some shots. That’s what we ask of those young guys.”

Davis understands that the Trojans will need to improve before a rematch and their first conference game against Liberty on Jan. 22.

“Liberty is a great team,” Davis said. “We have to play Liberty again and they’re going to watch the film and tear us apart just looking at what we couldn’t do. We just need to get back to being us and focus.”

For now though, the Trojans will have no problem with another early season victory.

“It’s still early,” Williams said. “Basically we’re going to try and use these good things we found this evening and try to build on them.”