Tigers fall to Jerome, Caldwell

The Mountain Home Tigers' perils continued last week, as they dropped road games at Jerome and Caldwell.

Jerome Tigers 68

Mountain Home 55

A 9-0 run in the first quarter by Jerome helped them build up a 21-10 first-quarter lead, and Mountain Home was never able to make up the difference, losing 68-55 at Jerome last Tuesday.

Mountain Home took an early 5-2 lead on Jacob Monasterio's trey, and regained the lead 7-6 on Tyler Hicks' basket with six minutes left in the first period.

The Tigers trailed just 10-9, when Jerome went on a 9-0 run to lead, 19-9. It was 21-10 after a quarter.

Mountain Home fell behind by 18, at 30-12, in the second quarter before battling back to within 13, 36-23, at the half.

The third quarter saw Mountain Home rally to within eight, 38-30, with five minutes left in the period, but Jerome hit four treys on their way to a 57-37 lead heading into the fourth.

Jerome enjoyed their biggest lead, 68-45, with 3:05 left. Mountain Home then scored the final 10 points of the ball game to make it a 68-55 final.

"Jerome has won some games and they've got some momentum and they had the flow going and we weren't quite up to that pace," said Mountain Home coach Tony Kerfoot after the game.

"You come out and play that flat, it doesn't look to me like you want to win very bad, and we're going to have to get after it and defend something. I didn't think we showed the desire to play defense, and the teams we've got on our schedule from here on out are going to score a lot of points on you if you don't play a little better defense than we did tonight."

Jarrod Roberson and Jacob Monasterio both scored 12 points to lead the Tigers at Jerome.

Robert Moss added seven points, Tyler Hicks had six, Troy Williams and Travis Eikeness both scored five, David Armstrong, four, and Eric Gardzina and Kenny Florer each had two points.

Caldwell 45

Mountain Home 39

Add Saturday night's Tiger game at Caldwell as another one of those that got away, as Mountain Home lost the lead in the fourth quarter, falling short 45-39.

Mountain Home jumped out to a 7-1 lead, but needed a putback by David Anderson to lead 9-8 after a quarter.

The second quarter saw the lead go back-and-forth, with three ties, and Mountain Home up 20-19, going into the locker room at halftime.

The Tigers maintained their lead in the third period, and with Troy Williams trey near the end of the quarter led 31-25 heading into the fourth.

In the fourth quarter, Caldwell quickly cut the Tiger lead to two but Mountain Home pushed it back up to five, 36-31, on two free throws by Travis Eikeness with 5:16 left.

The Tigers would not score again until 1:44 was left, when Robert Moss hit one of two free throws to snap an 8-0 run by Caldwell, the Cougars now leading 39-37.

Mountain Home would not score again until a basket by Moss with 26 seconds left that put the Tigers within four, 43-39.

Neeko Stone sank two free throws with 18 seconds left to make it a 45-39 final.

"We didn't score much in the second half, and I thought we had ample looks, wide open shots. The ball didn't drop, and we're going to have to make shots to win," said Coach Kerfoot.

Kerfoot was pleased with the defensive effort against Caldwell's Mario Betancourt, who had hit four treys and scored 24 points against them the first meeting. This time he made just two of seven hurried three-point attempts and ended the night with 11 points.

"I thought we did a nice job defensively. We didn't do a nice job in the first half on the post. When they saw we were taking Betancourt away, they just went in to their post and got the ball in to him. In the second half, we started getting around and defending better, and I think they had problems with that, but we didn't score any points in the process, so it didn't do a whole lot of good."

The Tigers, who had upped their free-throw average to 62 percent with good shooting, managed just eight of 21 for just 38 percent.

"We win the ball game right there if we shoot decent," lamented Coach Kerfoot, reflecting on their free-throw shooting.

Jarrod Roberson and Travis Eikeness led the Tigers with nine points each. Robert Moss added eight points, Troy Williams scored five, David Anderson and Jacob Monasterio both had three, and Tyler Hicks scored two points and led the team in rebounds with five.

The Tigers took a 1-9 conference record and 4-12 overall mark into last night's home game against Skyview. They play at Bishop Kelly Friday night.