The spirit of Klay Thompson possessed Alamosa senior Josh Cody on Saturday in Bayfield.
He didn’t quite reach the Golden State guard’s 37 in one quarter, but he made eight consecutive 3-pointers to finish with 26 points. Five of them came from the same spot in the right corner in the first quarter.
That salvo led the Mean Moose to a 75-62 win.
Cody surpassed his career high with 17 points in the first quarter. His coach gave him the OK to shoot whenever he was open after that.
“Usually my team does it,” Cody said. “My team kept feeding it to me. It was all a rush.”
He missed his first shot a little over two minutes into the second half and had to sit on the bench with foul trouble. By the time he returned with 6 minutes, 1 second left in the game, it already was over.
“I’ve played that kid for three years now, and I’ve never seen him shoot like that,” said BHS junior Zane Phelps, son of Dion and Koel Phelps. “He had a good night, and it’s hard to defend somebody when they play that well.”
BHS trailed 38-28 at halftime when the Cody Show was in its first act. That followed a brisk first quarter that BHS (8-6, 0-5 Intermountain League) led 13-10.
“We started denying him, but once we started denying him, other things were open,” Phelps said.
Cody’s immolation changed Bayfield’s approach to the game. It switched defenses and got away from its typical offense.
“We got caught up in him making his 3s, so we’d come down and jack some 3s, too, it felt like,” BHS head coach Jeff Lehnus said.
After Cody went to the bench, BHS started to narrow the gap. Preston Hardy cut it to 47-33 with 5:15 left in the third quarter. The Wolverines eventually cut their deficit to eight but never could get it below that until the end.
“Something would happen that we couldn’t break that barrier,” Lehnus said.
But Lehnus’ message all season has been about progress. He sees a 13-point loss in February as an improvement from the 19-point beating the team took at Alamosa (12-4, 5-0 IML) in January, especially with Hardy recovering from the flu.
Other players have needed to step up into that void, such as freshman Ryan Phelps, who scored 13 points to tie Zane Phelps for the team lead.
Progress also means looking ahead to the team’s next game – a 7 p.m. Pine River Rivalry showdown with Ignacio High School on Tuesday. The Bobcats are riding an 11-game winning streak after beating Ouray on Saturday.
“I don’t think anybody’s got to pump us up for that,” Zane Phelps said. “It’s the game of the week, in my opinion.”
kgrabowski@durangoherald.com
