WALES — Mountain Valley ended its two-game losing streak with a 67-54 win, secured in a second-half battle against Oak Hill in a Class B South boys basketball game Saturday.
Tanner Henry was the leading scorer for the Falcons (2-3), finishing with 27 points overall.
“We had a spurt where I had one of my best shooters come off the bench, and I think he scored like 20 points in one of those quarters,” Mountain Valley coach Scot New said about Henry. “It was definitely a huge boost; it was good to get a win.”
Henry got going after the first quarter, with seven points in the second quarter, 10 in the third and eight in the fourth.
The first quarter was a slow start for both teams, especially Oak Hill (1-4), which put up eight points against Mountain Valley’s 14.
“It was a little slow going early for both sides, but we started to settle into things in the second quarter,” Raiders coach Ben Redstone said. “Halftime comes and we made a few adjustments, talked about a few things that they were doing defensively and what we had to do offensively. Came out, executed a few times, got them out of the defense, but we have just got to make baskets.”
The Raiders outscored the Falcons 19-16 in the third and briefly took a lead, but Mountain Valley pulled away and pulled out the victory in the end.
Looking back to the first quarter, Braden Dubuc (six points) started off the scoring for the Raiders with a 3-pointer at the 2:45 minute mark. Eli Desmond (17 points) finished on one of his two free throws, and Landen Denis (12 points) and Michael Henry (two points) both chipped in a 2-pointer.
For the Falcons, the scoring distribution was spread across six different players, which was indicative of the rest of the game’s offensive style. Rilan Farnum led the first quarter, scoring four of his six overall points. The quarter was back and forth across the court, with several rebounds, missed shots and turnovers on both sides.
“We didn’t feel great to start, we were a little sluggish,” New said. “I think having the day off and kind of trying to get ourselves to play basketball was tough. We just were playing sluggish. We just weren’t playing full of effort with our defense.”
The action started to pick up in the second quarter, which New said he thinks was due to the defense settling in and engaging. He also changed the Falcons’ defense from a man-to-man to a zone to try and force more turnovers. New’s plan worked, especially when Owen Sevigny (11 points) logged a steal off Oak Hill, and quickly dumped it to Henry, who finished with a 2-pointer.
“Offense comes and goes, but defense has got to be where we kind of focus,” New said. “I think that was a game-changer, especially in the second half. We just got after it, got transition baskets and we got some easy points and I think that helped us.”
New said the Falcons are not a half-court set team and tend to miss several easy shots. Henry did send a long pass to Jyrrmal Yates (10 points), who finished with an effortless 2-pointer. The Falcons upped their output to 16 points in the second quarter, and the Raiders added 11, bringing the lead at halftime to 11 points, 30-19.
The third quarter brought the heat on both sides, with each team securing their own scoring run.
“I’ve never been a starter, but usually come off the bench shooting pretty well,” Henry said. “The team knew we weren’t playing to where we should have been, so we turned it around from then.”
The Raiders had their first run, which was a nine-point scoring spree, ended by Colby Frisbie (five points), but it provided Oak Hill a two-point lead.
“In the third quarter, we made a great run,” Redstone said. “But then they called the timeout, and unfortunately, the wheels fell off for us. We had too many turnovers, couldn’t get a good look, kind of got down on ourselves a little bit, and called the time so we could regroup. We made another little run, got a couple of baskets in, but then they just had too many for us.”
After the two Raiders scoring runs, a couple minutes later around the five-minute mark, Mountain Valley went on its own 10-point scoring run, fueled by Henry. Oak Hill’s PJ Smith (10 points) ended the run with a 2-pointer in the last 30 seconds of the third quarter. New said he thinks that the team has skill, but does not always show it right out of the gate.
“I think when a lot of teams scout us, they don’t really see the true side of us,” New said. “Sometimes we just don’t play the way we’re capable of playing.
“I just told them at the end of the game, we played a quarter and a half and we ended up winning by (13). Imagine if you played four quarters of basketball, it’d be a little bit of a different game.”
The Falcons dramatically picked up their offensive and defensive game, finishing on 2- and 3-pointers and grabbing rebounds and steals. Redstone said he thought the Raiders brought the intensity on defense, and the team started switching on every single screen, which would have worked better for them had Tanner Henry not had the third quarter he did.
“He caught fire and he didn’t miss, and that killed us,” Redstone said. “Offensively, once we slowed down, took care of the ball and didn’t turn it over, and actually got into our stuff, we were able to put together some baskets, but it was too late.”
In the fourth quarter, Mountain Valley dominated the action again with another scoring run, bringing the score to 61-42 with four minutes left in the game. Henry logged three 2-pointers and made two free throws, rounding out his second-half stats. For the Raiders, Desmond got the crowd going with three treys to compliment Dubuc’s 3-pointer.
Denis tried to bring the gap closer together for the Raiders, and Redstone said the senior leader was a standout in Saturday’s game and “probably had his best game yet.”
“We’re extremely young,” Redstone said. “We’ve got one senior that plays, we got one junior that plays, everybody else was sophomores. We have an extremely tough three-game schedule coming up and then after that, I think we have a lot of games we can compete with. I think this is a team that can get close to 10 wins at the end of the year.”
In the last minute, New put the Junior Varsity lineup in, and Caleb Gamache chipped in a 2-pointer.
“Caleb Gamache has actually never played basketball,” New said. “He’s a senior, so this is his first year that he decided he wanted to come out. When he made that cut to the basket, that was the best offense we had all night.”
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