Tigers clobber Jerome 67-46, fall to BK

The Mountain Home Tigers came away with a split of their games last week, winning big at home against Jerome, and losing even bigger at Bishop Kelly.

Mountain Home 67

Jerome 46

The Mountain Home Tigers had their shooting eyes in tune last Tuesday night when they hosted the Jerome Tigers in non-conference basketball. Mountain Home won the battle of Tigers, shooting over 50 percent from the field, from long range as well as inside the arc.

Chance Craig hit one of two free throws to give Jerome a 1-0 lead with 5:33 to go in the first quarter.

Mountain Home did not score until almost three and a half minutes into the ball game, but when they did, on Matt Maurer's basket, they took a 2-1 lead, a lead they would not relinquish the rest of the night.

Mountain Home led 11-5 after a quarter, and hit nine of 12 field goals in the second period to increase their lead to 33-21 at halftime. They built up a 19-point lead in the third, and led 49-34 heading into the final quarter.

A three-minute span in the middle of the fourth saw Mountain Home go on a 13-0 run to increase their lead to 65-38. The Tigers coasted in from there for a 67-46 win.

"I was happy with the win," said Mountain Home Tiger basketball coach Tony Kerfoot after the game.

"We had some moments where we had really good flow, and I did a lot of substituting tonight, part of that to make sure we had our tempo up, and I think sometimes that kind of ruined our flow a little bit, too, but I thought it was important that we did that tonight to get a lot of the kids a lot of looks, and try to keep the tempo up, too. I saw a lot of improvement in a lot of the things we're doing, especially defensively and rebounding."

Arturo Garcia led the Tigers in scoring with 14 points. Stephen Reinschmidt added 10 points, Travis Elliott netted nine. Brock Zamora and Clark Williams both scored eight points, a new season high for Williams. Keith Yagues canned two treys for six points, Matt Maurer added four, Jarrod Roberson and Mark Fischer each scored three, and Danny Downen scored two.

Mountain Home hit eight of 15 (53 percent) treys, and shot 60 percent (18-30) inside the arc, and hit seven of 12 (58 percent) from the free-throw line.

Jerome made four of 11 (36 percent) long range shots, and 15 of 30 (50 percent) inside the circle, and just four of 10 (40 percent) free throws.

Mountain Home won the battle of the boards 24-13, led by Matt Maurer's eight.

Bishop Kelly 71

Mountain Home 45

The Mountain Home Tigers got a rude lesson Saturday night at Bishop Kelly. Twice the Tigers battled back from deficits to tie the ball game, and twice the Knights shot back ahead, the last time for good, taking a 71-45 SIC 4A conference win.

Mountain Home led 4-0 early in the ball game, but a couple treys by the Knights gave them a 10-6 lead after a quarter.

The Knights hit three straight treys to take a 19-10 lead early in the second period. Mountain Home then fought back to tie the game at 19-19 on a basket by Stephen Reinschmidt with 1:42 left in the half.

From there, the Knights went on an 11-2 run to lead 30-21 heading into the locker room at halftime.

The Tigers came out strong in the third quarter, and tied the game at 30-30 in the first two minutes of the period.

Once again Bishop Kelly responded, this time with a 20-2 run the rest of the quarter to lead 50-32 heading into the final quarter.

Mountain Home was not able to make any rally in the fourth quarter, and the Knights added 21 points in the final stanza for their 71-45 win.

"I knew coming in they'd shoot the ball well,"said Coach Kerfoot after the game. "I saw them play at Emmett last night, and they didn't shoot the ball anything like that, but I knew they shot the ball well, and did, especially from three-point range. That makes it pretty hard to defend. They are extremely quick, and if we match up and go man on them, they go by us and they're dishing for lay-ins all night, so we (went zone and) had to get to the shooters.

"I don't know if, at some point in time there we got tired or we quit believing, because when we did get there and we hurried them, they missed them, but then we just quit getting there, and when they had time to set up, it was going down.

"I thought we did a good job at times, but we've got to get more active on defense, and we're standing still, they score 70 points. I know what our offensive abilities are, and we're not going to score in the 70s with the people in our league, because they're going to play hard enough defense that that's not going to happen, and offensively we struggled a little bit tonight, but basically it was because we were standing around and not moving."

Arturo Garcia and Stephen Reinschmidt both scored in double figures against Bishop Kelly. Garcia led the way with 15 points, Reinschmidt added 14. But from there, the offensive production took a dive down to three points for Jarrod Roberson and Travis Elliott.

Clark Williams, Keith Yagues, Mark Fischer, Danny Downen and Matt Maurer each scored two points.

Mountain Home shot just 33 percent (17/51) from the field to Bishop Kelly's 50 percent (23/46), with the telling tale the three-point shooting, where the Knights were nine of 19 (47 percent), while Mountain Home hit on just two of 15 (13 percent). The Tigers shot 75 percent (9/12) from the free-throw line, Bishop Kelly 70 percent (16/23).

The Tigers complete first round conference action this week, hosting Kuna Friday night and Emmett on Saturday. Mountain Home is 0-3 in conference play, and 3-9 overall.

"Kuna and Emmett both haven't won a whole lot of games," said Kerfoot, "but Kuna took Vallivue to overtime before losing, and Emmett took Bishop Kelly to overtime last night, so it just shows that we're going to have to come out and we're going to have to be ready to play."

Saturday is a Super Saturday, with both girls and boys games, starting with a sophomore girls game at 11 a.m. The varsity girls game is set to tip off around 6 p.m. with the boys varsity to follow around 8 p.m.