Donovan Joyner leads host Las Vegas to decisive victory

Las Vegas senior guard Donovan Joyner says he doesn’t care about scoring.

Just winning.

On Tuesday night, though, he did a little bit of both.

Joyner poured in a game-high 23 points, guiding the host Wildcats to a 73-42 victory over Jefferson (California) in the first round of the annual Las Vegas Prep Championship.

Las Vegas advances to play Chaparral at 6 p.m. Wednesday in the second round. Las Vegas coach Jason Wilson was pleased with his team’s performance.

“It’s good to have a tournament at home,” he said. “We’ve played a lot of our games on the road so far, so to be able to have our own tournament and to be able to play it here is good for our kids.”

The Wildcats dismantled the Democrats’ 2-3 zone defense by moving the ball and attacking its porous gaps. Las Vegas limited Jefferson’s offense, too, and forced dozens of contested 3-point attempts that triggered its fast-break offense.

Joyner scored 13 points in the first half, staking the Wildcats to a 44-23 halftime lead.

“It’s the adrenaline that gets me going and gets me into a rhythm,” he said.

Joyner, who scored 41 points against Woods Cross (Utah) in the Tarkanian Classic, insists that no defender can keep him from attacking the rim. And that certainly looked to be the case on Tuesday.

He probed the paint in the second half for more easy baskets and watched comfortably from the bench as the Wildcats’ reserves extended the lead in the fourth quarter.

“I can get anywhere, anywhere I want,” Joyner said. “I just want to win (though). I just like the win column, honestly.”

Contact reporter Sam Gordon at sgordon@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BySamGordon on Twitter.