Duane Ticknor, a minor-league coaching veteran who led the Dakota Wizards to back-to-back playoff appearances from 2007 to ’09, will be the next head coach of the Mad Ants.
With all due respect to the Answer, the Fort Wayne Mad Ants might have hit on the answer.
Yes, Allen Iverson, they really were talking about practice Saturday night. And not, you know, with the disdain you (and YouTube) once made so famous.
“Practice, they say, makes perfect,” said guard Roderick Wilmont, after the Mad Ants disposed of Sioux Falls 107-98 by sharing the basketball at one end (a fairly new development) and denying it on the other (ditto).
“Yes, we had a great week of practice,” concurred Ants coach Joey Meyer.
How great?
“Well, it’s funny,” Meyer went on. “I was gonna show them some Iowa tape (from the two losses in Des Moines last weekend). But I got sick to my stomach. I can’t watch it, and I ain’t showing these guys this, because it’s so negative how bad we played.”
So what he did instead was focus on everything that came out of the three days of practice this week – three days that paid off Saturday with 50 percent shooting, 45 percent shooting from behind the arc and 20 assists against 15 turnovers.
“Night and day,” Meyer said.
That was equally true at the defensive end, where the Mad Ants smothered Sioux Falls when it mattered most.
After Wilmont’s twisting drive down the lane broke an 87-87 tie with 9:19 to play, the Ants put the clamps on Sioux Falls thereafter, allowing just two field goals and six points across the next 7:53. That was enough to keep at bay a Skyforce team that owned the glass, outrebounding the Ants 49-37 and 18-7 on the offensive end.
“That’s what we’ve been harping on,” Wilmont said. “We haven’t really been harping on offense. It’s been defense.
“The last two games we played in Iowa, our team defense was awful. But we’ve got to keep working in practice and then bring it onto the court, and that’s what we did tonight.”
The Ants led by as much as 14 in the first half before the Skyforce used a 23-4 run to take a 59-58 halftime lead. Sioux Falls outrebounded the Ants 25-16 and had a dozen of its offensive boards in the first half.
The Ants, though, hit their first four shots of the third quarter to go back up 66-59, and the chase was on again.
Sioux Falls tied it once, but the Ants got to the third-quarter break with an 85-78 lead thanks to 11-of-22 shooting, six points apiece from Ron Howard and Rob Kurz and five more from Kyle McAlarney.
Kurz (28 points, 11 boards), Howard (20 points), McAlarney (18 and five threes) and Wilmont (17 points in 27 minutes) led a balanced Ants attack.
“With this team, it’s a pretty good shooting team, so if we can hit shots we’ll be in a lot of games,” Wilmont said. “And if we play defense and hit shots, we’ll be fine.”
