Derek Hillyer and Cody Rose weren’t quite enough to save the Bayfield High School boys basketball team’s postseason hopes.

Hillyer and Rose combined for 46 of the Wovlerines’ 53 points in Tuesday night’s Intermountain League Tournament play-in game, one point shy of the Monte Vista Pirates’ total 54 and two points shy of a berth in the IML final four, which Bayfield will host this weekend.

“We get to host; we don’t get to play in it,” BHS head coach Bill Hesford said. “That’s definitely painful.”

“It hurts a lot,” Hillyer said about missing the IML tournament. “It’s kind of embarrassing, almost.”

What went wrong?

“Everything went wrong,” said Hillyer, who scored a game-high 28 points. “We couldn’t take care of the ball.”

“We just didn’t play good,” said a rosy-eyed Rose after his 18-point effort. “We didn’t come together as a team.”

“Everything” mostly meant breakdowns on defense and too many turnovers.

Hesford said he thinks the team peaked a couple of weeks too early and suffered a bout of illness last week that slowed his boys down on defense. Too many times, Bayfield defenders were a step slow, and instead of playing tight team defense, players keyed on the ball and left a man open under the basket.

More than a few times during the game, Bayfield would creep to within a point or two only to get caught in transition and fall back behind by more than a possession.

“We just weren’t playing the transition defense we needed to play,” Hesford said.

Trey Lange missed the game with an illness. Hesford said his absence threw off the substitution rotation and deprived the Wolverines of the “spark” that Lange brings on defense.

And with the ball in their hands, the Wolverines kept putting the ball back in Pirate hands.

Bayfield racked up more than 20 turnovers less than a week after 28 turnovers paved the way for another one-point Monte Vista victory in overtime last Thursday night.

“The turnovers are what killed us (Tuesday night),” Hillyer said.

Hesford said his team wanted to focus on making short, easy passes in the first quarter. Those passes wouldn’t connect, though, leaving the Wolverines down 13-9 at the end of one, trying to surmount five first-quarter turnovers.

After that, it became the Hillyer and Rose show.

The Bayfield guards fed the ball to Hillyer, and he put it up in the paint to the tune of 24 under-the-basket points. Four more points came on free throws.

For his part, Rose pushed the ball down the court, sometimes finding an open lane for a full-court transition layup, sometimes knocking one down from beyond the arc. He scored nine from 3-point range.

After trailing in the first quarter, Bayfield tied the game up 24-24 on a Rose 3-pointer with two minutes to go in the half, capping off an 8-0 run before Monte Vista pushed its lead back to two before the intermission.

After the break, Hillyer helped close the gap again, putting back a couple of offensive boards to close to within two points at 38-36 minutes after the Pirates went up by seven.

But even with the two seniors piling up points, Monte Vista’s Bailey Garcia and Keith Romero wouldn’t be denied leading roles in the drama. The pair combined for 36 of the Pirates’ points, 21 from Romero and 15 from Garcia. Many of them were from easy backdoor baskets or quick transitions that penetrated Bayfield’s sluggish zone.

Hillyer said it seemed like the Wolverines expected Monte Vista just to give up when their lead disappeared, but they didn’t.

On a jump shot from freshman Preston Hardy, Bayfield had its first lead with 3:20 to go in the game at 51-50. Garcia put the Pirates back ahead, and the Wovlerines held within one point as the clock ticked into the final minute.

Garcia missed a 1-and-1 foul shot with 24 seconds to go, and Hillyer, who also had six blocks on the night, pulled down the rebound only to miss a hook shot with less than 10 seconds to play in regulation.

After another foul, it was Romero’s turn to miss a 1-and-1 shot with five seconds to go, but Joey Webb’s frantic attempt to run the court and get off a buzzer-beater left him tripping and skidding on his own 3-point line for a travel call that ended the Wolverines’ season and will leave them watching the IML tournament from their own stands.

“It’s the worst feeling in the world,” Rose said.

jsojourner@durangoherald.com