Fort Lee hoops team downs Fort Meade, 78-64

FORT LEE, Va. (Feb. 14, 2014) -- The penetration and outside shooting of Donald Flowers along with the strong inside play of James Jones helped the Fort Lee Travellers men's basketball team to a 78-64 win over the Fort Meade Patriots Saturday at MacLaughlin Fitness Center.

Flowers started out slow but finished with 23 points. James Jones was steady throughout, scoring 22 for the contest.

The win was the third of the season against two losses for the Lee team, which retained the fourth spot in Washington Area Military Athletic Conference standings. The Pats fell to 2-3 in the nine-team league.

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Marvin Michael, the Traveller coach, said after the game he was generally satisfied with the performance, but his team came up short in a number of areas.

"We had our good points, and we had our bad points," he said. "I do think we need to work on our defense."

After a first half in which the Lee team led most of the time and the scrappy Pats trailed by as much as 10 points, a critical break came during the last 10 minutes of the contest as Meade guard and former All-Army selectee Llewellyn Smalley scored several buckets to help the Pats close the gap to 59-55 with 7:40 remaining.

Flowers, however, along with backcourt teammate Julian Simmons countered with at least six points down the stretch as the Travellers stymied the Pats' comeback bid and blew the game open, going up by as many as 18 points with less than three minutes remaining. Flowers said to his team's credit, it played better defense and outran its opponent in the second half but has to take better care of the ball.

We turned the ball over a lot," he said. "We will have to work on that in the next game."

In the first half of the game, Fort Lee went to the locker room with a 38-30 advantage on the strength of Jones' 12 points and Flowers all-around play.

The Pats young center, 21-year-old Deion McClenton, kept the Patriots competitive in the first 20 minutes, scoring 10 points, mostly in the paint. He was less effective in the second half and scored only one field goal. He finished with 15 for the game.

Smalley led all Pat scorers with 19 points.

The Fort Lee team is scheduled to play next in the Capital Classic hoops tournament set for this weekend in the nation's capital. To be successful, Michael said his players will have to continue their aggressiveness.

"We have to stay hungry," he said. "That's the bottom line. If we do that from beginning to end, the result will be a win."