About the only excitement left on a late Tuesday night is if the Lowry High School boys basketball team was going to score 100 points.
To get there, the Buckaroos needed to score 23 points in the final eight minutes of play. Making it even tougher, all eight of those minutes were on a running clock when Lowry pushed the lead to 35 points with 1:33 left in the third quarter.
Mason Ellingford ended the suspense with a put back in the final minute to give Lowry a 100-49 win over Fernley.
“Everything started with Chance (Huitt) and Anthony (Hemp) on defense,” said LHS coach Chad Peters. “Chance got in early foul trouble with two fouls and we asked him to guard their best guy. He did a good job of staying out of foul trouble and held his man down. Chance was the only guy that did not score tonight but was just as important in the win than anybody else all night long. Anthony came off the bench and picked up the slack. He got hot, hit some shots and played great defense.”
Lowry was hot from the start with its shooting, making six 3-pointers in the first quarter and 16 in the game. JJ Backus knocked down two straight shots from long distance to give Lowry a 12-3 lead and followed with two 3 pointers to make the score 18-6. The Buckaroos closed out the first quarter with 3 pointers from Max Mavity and Alex Ruiz to lead 24-7.
Ruiz opened the second quarter with his second 3-pointer and moments later, Kobe Stoker had a 3-point play the old-fashioned way to push the margin to 30-7.
“It was a fun night,” Huitt said. “Defense is our main point and we work hard at it in practice. “We wanted to come out and prove that we have been working on it. Defense started our scoring. It was a lot of fast breaks and up and down the court. The defense starts everything and helps the players do better. We came together as a team last weekend in Elko. That really helped tonight.”
Fernley made a small run to close the gap to 32-17, only to see Hemp answer with five straight points, including his third 3-pointer to push the advantage back to 38-17. Robert Rangel found himself in the middle of the 3-point barrage, giving Lowry a 43-23 lead.
Backus opened up the third quarter with a pair of 3-pointers, as Lowry scored 32 points in the third quarter to lead 77-39. Michael Casalez scored 14 of his 17 points in the fourth quarter, including two 3-pointers.
“This group is capable of doing this,” Peters said. “You are not going to score 100 points every night and shoot the ball like we did. Let's be realistic, they were missing a bunch of their guys and four starters. When shots are falling, everyone looks good and everyone looks smart. You still have to play defense. For the most part we did that. I liked our energy we had all night. Guys were flying around. To score 100 points with a running clock is impressive. You just can’t do that. Our defense led to our offense. Even in the fourth quarter we had four passes before shooting the ball. When we go strong inside like we did tonight, they have to respect that. When they take that way, our shooter did their job tonight.”
Backus also scored 17 points in the win, with Hemp adding 12 and Stoker and Ruiz 11 each. Garner had eight points, Preston Snow seven, Anthony Gildone six, Max Mavity four, Robert Rangel three and Derek Espinoza and Ellingford two each.
“Chance got those two fouls quick, so I knew I had to step up,” Hemp said. “My shot just felt good tonight. All of those 3’s tonight came off our defense and fast breaks.”
Lowry hosts Sparks Saturday at 3:30 p.m. and goes on the road to play Truckee (Dec. 19) and North Valleys (Dec. 20).
“We are going to feed off this, but not count on it every night,” Peters said. “The most important game is Saturday. We can’t look past anybody.”
