The Bayfield Wolverines turned Tuesday’s basketball game upside-down, emphatically building up a 25-18 halftime advantage in their home opener.
With less than a minute remaining in the fourth quarter, however, visiting Monte Vista flipped the script.
After erasing a seven-point Bayfield lead late in the fourth quarter, Monte Vista’s Azariah Hurtado’s hit a jumper to make it a 51-50 contest with 47 ticks left. And after Bayfield senior Cody Ross missed two free throws with 0:32 to go, MVHS junior Kaden Mellott took a pass from junior Alex Marquez and gave the guests the lead for good, en route to a 56-51 Pirates victory at BHS Gymnasium.
“There was a couple times I was telling the guys, ‘Buy yourself time. Take your time at the free-throw line, there’s no pressure,’” Monte Vista coach Presley Garcia said. “We knocked them down, down the stretch – when we needed them.”
The Wolverines dropped to 0-6, while the Pirates improved to 4-3.
Closing out the first half with extreme gusto, Bayfield got a two-pointer from sophomore post Vincent McCullough, plus a two-pointer and another trey from Roderick all before the buzzer, leaving the Pirates somewhat shellshocked.
“Each day we’re trying to be better, and I just came into the locker room and told them, ‘Second half, let’s be better,’” Garcia said. “What we can’t do is have more than one mistake at a time, and at the end of the second we had three or four mistakes in a row – and (seven Bayfield) points unanswered …. It was like, ‘Hey, we’re better than that. Let’s go show it.’”
McCullough began the second half scoring inside, and Mellott countered with a 3-pointer. However, Bayfield kept fighting as the third quarter progressed, building a 41-35 lead.
Having traded buckets almost equally throughout the fourth quarter, the Wolverines led 49-42 after senior Rathan Brinkerhoff hit one of two free throws with 2:04 to go, but the Pirates began their decisive rally with a Marquez trey and a Hurtado deuce.
Marquez led Monte Vista with 14 points, while Hurtado tallied 11 points.
Bayfield’s Cooper Rodrick scored a game-high 24 points, while McCullough tallied 14 points.
“I don’t think we could have guarded him one-on-one; he’s a great kid and finishes strong,” Garcia said, his team 3-2 already in games decided by five or fewer points. “So I just said, ‘Get bodies in there and close out. If they knock some down (from outside) this one’s on me.’ And we got lucky. They got a little cold there at the end.”
The Pirates shot 15 of 23 from the foul line, while the Wolverines went 5 of 17 from the charity stripe.
