JAY — The Spruce Mountain Phoenix celebrated the yuletide a couple of days early with a 51-50 victory over the determined Poland Knights in a boys’ basketball game Thursday night.
Spruce heads into school vacation week with a 5-0 record.
“I can’t get too greedy,” Spruce Mountain coach Scott Bessey said. “I don’t think we played very well, but I think they had a lot to do with that. The third quarter the last couple of games have been a problem.
“We come out extremely cold and we have been unable to get going in the third quarter two games in a row, and both of those game have been comfortable at halftime and have gone down to the last second because we struggle when we come out of halftime.
“I like where we are at. We are 5-0 and we are not playing well, and this is taking nothing away from Poland. They are the reason we struggled a little bit. We are not playing well, but the last couple of years we lose these games that we are not playing well. The good thing is we are finding a way to win, and we are escaping it.”
The Knights (2-3) didn’t go easy on the Phoenix, who struggled to shake Poland all game.
This was down-to-the-wire basketball and Poland almost tipped the scales and handed Spruce its first loss of the season with just seconds left in the fourth quarter.
There was 2:28 minutes left in the game and Spruce was leading 49-45 when Caleb Hodgkin scored two points, giving the Phoenix little breathing room and plenty of time for Poland to pull off a victory.
But senior forward Caulin Parker was fouled and he nonchalantly approached the free-throw line and sank both shots with little fanfare with 54.1 seconds left in the game.
“Big shots that we needed to make as team to close out games like that,” Parker nonchalantly said. “I was mentally prepared for the moment. We do a good job of simulating that in practice.
“It is always good to get the win, but there is always room for improvement.”
The Knights got the ball back and Hodgkin came right back at Spruce with a 3-pointer to move the Poland to within one point with 40 seconds left.
Spruce got the ball back and Austin Darling was fouled, but he missed the front end of a 1-and-1 at the charity stripe.
“My shots aren’t falling and I just look toward my defense,” Darling said. “It is what I try to do. I am just happy we are 5-0 — on to the next one.”
Poland got possession of the ball and made a furious drive to the net, but Darling was all over the court on defense and forced the Knights to call a timeout with 12 seconds left.
The Knights returned to the floor, where Darling went right after them and nearly stole the ball, but his defense certainly stole Poland’s thunder. The Knights drove to basket and missed. Senior guard Noah Treble (15 points) ripped down the rebound as the buzzer blew.
There were heroes on both sides of the court in the fourth quarter. Despite having a tough night on offense, Darling made up for it on defense. Junior Mason Shink made two of his four 3-pointers to add to his team-high 16 points.
For Poland, Hodgkin scored seven of his 15 points for Poland in the fourth, and senior guard Kurtis Leighton dropped in six of his eight points. Senior guard Nate Chouinard scored a game-high 17 points.
“I was really proud of our toughness in the second half,” Poland coach Tyler Tracy said. “That’s a great team over there. They go on a lot of runs, and we never really allowed them to go on a big run. We kept it under 10 the entire game, and in the fourth quarter, that’s when we have to be our toughest, so we were tough and just an unlucky bounce away from a few extra minutes.
“That’s a very good team over there. I am really happy with the toughness we displayed. It isn’t an easy place to play. We handled their runs well and we responded to everything they threw at us. And give them credit, too. They handled the adversity. We’d make a big run and they would hit a big 3. You hate going into Christmas break with a loss.”
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