With offensive struggles having been a reflection of many previous Three Rivers mens basketball games this year, it was nice to see the Raiders come so close to a hundy Saturday night.

Sitting on 99 points late, head coach Brian Bess had his team hold onto the rock and kill the clock instead of going for the milestone 100 total and settled with an emphatic 99-72 win over Tennessee Prep at the Libla Family Sports Complex.

The Raiders (13-15) shot 55 percent from the field and big games from Mo Niang (28 points, seven rebounds), Mario Fleming (25 points), Lamont Jackson (16 points), and Hosane Kitenge (13 points, 13 rebounds).

"In my opinion, we have had the hardest schedule in the nation so we deserved a game where we had some fun and I was really worried we wouldn't because we didn't get after it early," Bess said. "As the game went on, we did better. We were fighting (playing down). We finished better against their press and attacked the backend of it better."

The Raiders offense was more efficient at the start than in recent outings and held a lead of varying margins ranging from one to five points in the first six minutes.

The offense wasn't the problem early as it was actually the usually reliable defense for Three Rivers struggling to contain some of the Prep interior passing that led to easy buckets. Combine that with some threes and the visitors were in a 24-all tie just over 11 minutes into the contest.

The offense continued to click, the defense firmed up and the Raiders found themselves up 47-32 at the break.

Scoring remained prolific after the intermission and the Raiders lead blossomed into the 20s as Prep couldn't make any significant dent.

On paper, the Raiders gave up a chunk of points, but that may be attributed to the pace of play and increased possessions both ways.

"Our field-goal percentage defense was still good (33.3)," Bess said. "But we did a lot of fouling that led to a lot of points."

Alan Dale - Daily American Republic