Woozy Harris leads Vipers to win
HIDALGO — Mike Harris had double vision to go with this double-double on Friday night, scoring 25 points and snagging 18 rebounds to lead the Rio Grande Valley Vipers to a 108-96 victory against Sioux Falls at Dodge Arena.
Harris had his right eye poked then slapped on the same play midway through the fourth quarter on a drive to the basket. It was indicative of the type of game it was.
“It was a dogfight,” said Harris, who recorded his ninth double-double of the season. “It was difficult. We had a little bit of a mental letdown, a little slippage, in the second half. Everything got blurry. I had skewed vision a little bit.”
On his subsequent free throw attempts in which he made one and missed one following the double shot to the eye, Harris said: “On the free throw line, I was seeing double rims and I just aimed for the middle.”
The Vipers had a 88-67 lead heading into the fourth quarter, but the Skyforce whittled it to 91-80 in the first four minutes. The Vipers increased that lead to 98-81 with 6:55 remaining, but Sioux Falls made another charge to close to within 99-89 two minutes later.
“We did a good job of not letting them get inside single digits,” Harris said. “It’s like when you cut open a wound and the blood starts coming and they get a little sniff of that and their confidence goes up. We did a good job of executing our plays down the stretch.”
The Vipers responded to that charge with two baskets by Craig Winder and a conventional 3-point play from Harris to put away the Skyforce.
“It was a big, physical game,” said Vipers coach Chris Finch, who recorded his 399th career victory on Friday. “They really brought the wood tonight. We’re a small, fast team and they bothered us in that way.”
The Vipers defeated the Skyforce for the second day in a row and improved to 19-6 overall and 9-1 at Dodge Arena. Garrett Temple overcame a rough first half and finished with 18 points. Winder had 17 points. Jermaine Taylor, who was assigned from the Houston Rockets to the Vipers on Friday, had 14 points in his NBA D-League debut.
“I told our guys we lost concentration just a few less times than they actually quit,” Finch said. “We had a chance to put them away early and we didn’t do that. And when we didn’t do that, I knew (a physical) game was kind of going to be the way it was going to go.”
Reggie Williams scored 29 points to lead the Skyforce (12-14). Alexander Johnson had 21 points and Chris McCray 14.
In the first half, the Vipers took a 49-30 lead on Julian Sensley’s jumper at the 6:05 mark of the second quarter. The Vipers helped build that lead when they started off the quarter with three 3-pointers.
Taylor opened the second quarter with a three, followed by two from Winder.
Then the Vipers went cold, not scoring again until Harris’ driving layup with 0.4 seconds remaining in the half that gave the RGV a 51-42 lead at intermission. The Skyforce went on a 12-0 run during the Vipers’ scoring drought in the second quarter with McCray contributing six points in that span.
David Hinojosa covers the Rio Grande Valley Vipers for Valley Freedom Newspapers. You can also reach him at (956) 683-4442.
