Kirkwood Boys Dominate Duchesne to Move Into Title Game

With three players scoring in double figures, the Kirkwood Pioneers advanced to the championship game of the Denver Miller Tournament on Saturday with a 65-40 win over the Duchesne Pioneers on Friday night.

The win for Kirkwood (8-5, 1-0 Suburban South) extends its winning streak to four games and they will face Chaminade on Saturday at 2 p.m. in the championship game of the tournament.

"I thought that there was a point late in the second quarter where it was 21-19 and we finally decided to turn up the pressure defensively and we finished out the quarter on a 9-0 run to go up 30-19 at the half," Kirkwood head coach Bill Gunn said.

"Our defense was just outstanding as we held them to just 20 points in the second half and we felt really good about that."

Kirkwood was led by senior forward Lawrence Williams, who racked up 14 points. Junior guard Myles Artis scored 13 points while senior forward Mike McDowell finished the evening with 11.

"The big thing that I said to our guys was that I was proud of our defense and the fact that we shared the basketball really well," Gunn said. "I thought that we did a good job dribble penetrating and once we got to the basket we either kicked it out for a 3 or we found somebody open underneath."

Duchesne (7-6, 1-0 GAC North) had won five of its previous six games before the defeat to Kirkwood.

"I thought that in the second half that we ran out of gas and Kirkwood kept coming at us and kind of took it to us," Duchesne head coach Wade Bouslog said. "This team has got to understand that when things are not going well, and we're not hitting our shots, we can't shut down because that really hurt us."

Duchesne's Drew Moore led the Pioneers with 10 points in the loss to Kirkwood.

"I just feel like I didn't do enough for my team," Moore said. "We were stopping them in transition in the first half, but we just rolled over in the second half and I kept turning the ball over."