Davis, Miller shine at Wayne County All-Star Classic

By Allen Etzler
Published in Sports on May 23, 2015 10:35 PM

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By ALLENETZLER

aetzler@newsargus.com

Everybody in attendance knew about Joel Davis before Friday night.

Not everyone was as familiar with Victor Miller.

If they weren't, they are now.

Miller, the Wayne Country Day guard, nearly stole the show in the first annual Wayne County All-Star Classic as he captured the three-point contest title and nearly won the Most Valuable Player award.

"Victor Miller, had his team ended up winning, probably would have been the MVP," said Eastern Wayne coach and event organizer Chris Roberts.

But it was his teammate, Joel Davis, who scored the home team's last nine points in crunch time to help his team claim a 99-98 victory and took home the MVP award.

"I wanted to come out here and prove that I was the best," Davis said. "I know I was voted for first team but I wasn't player of the year and I felt like I had something to prove."

Davis finished the game with 25 points. His teammate Victor Miller scored a team-high 21.

The game itself was your typical all-star game -- filled with one-on-one isolations and an incredible lack of defense.

Rasheen Artis and Micah Smith carried their respective teams in a first half filled with long-range threes and fancy layups. Artis finished the half with 14 and had 21 for the game, and Smith had 17 first-half points to finish with 19.

"I think we saw why Rasheen Artis was the player of the year tonight," Roberts said. "He came out and really embraced it. He was having fun. He pretty much scored at will. I don't think he had much to prove but he did it anyway."

Smith, the dunk contest champion, worried the crowd a little when he went up for a dunk in the second half, and got hung up by the rim. He came down wincing and holding his ankle.

"I was just faking it," Smith said of his "injury."  "I was trying to get them to stop the play since they had a fastbreak."

It may have been an exhibition that was just for fun for the majority of the night, but when the game got close, the competitive juices started flowing and the players started to get more serious.

"That's how every all-star game is," Miller said. "First three quarters are fun, but you still want to win."

But i n a fourth quarter that almost saw more dunks than the actual dunk contest it was the finesse of the Cornell signee that stole the show. Davis led an offensive charge that erased an eight-point deficit in the waning minutes