Tigers improve to 2-1 in conference play

The Mountain Home Tigers picked up a couple conference wins in boys basketball last week, beating Nampa and Kuna.

Tigers 50

Nampa 40

The Mountain Home Tigers evened their conference record at 1-1 with a 50-40 conference win over the Nampa Bulldogs last Tuesday in Lloyd Schiller Gymnasium in Mountain Home.

The first quarter went back and forth, with the Tigers down one, 8-7, at its end, but after Cole Rivera hit a trey to start the second quarter that put Nampa up 11-7, the Tigers went on an 11-0 run the rest of the quarter to take an 18-11 lead into the locker room at halftime.

Mountain Home built up a 14-point lead in the third, but Nampa cut it to ten, 34-24, after three quarters.

Nampa battled back within six, 36-30, with 5:37 left in the game, but the Tigers got clutch treys from Danny Snelgrow and Chris Maholick, as Mountain Home pushed its lead back to double digits for the win.

"I thought we played real well, defensively," said Tiger basketball coach Tony Kerfoot. "I thought we rebounded pretty well.

"Offensively, we struggled -- give Nampa a little credit, they scrapped and they came out and played hard, and kind of took us out of our offense.

"The biggest thing I want the kids to take from this game is we played hard defensively, we took the things away from them that we needed to take away, and we gave ourselves a chance to win, and no matter how bad we executed our offense, we were still able to win the game because we were playing good defense."

Alex Campbell led the Tigers with 17 points, Chris Maholick netted 12, D.J. Elliott added nine, Danny Snelgrow six, and Dallin Dean, Trevor Woodruff and Deion Brown all scored two points.

Mountain Home shot 33 percent (5/15) on three-pointers, 39 percent (14/36) on two-pointers, and hit 58 percent (7/12) from the free-throw line.

Nampa hit just 17 percent (2/12) on treys, shot 41 percent (14/34) inside the arc, and 50 percent (4/8) on free throws.

The Tigers dominated the rebounding game, 37-15, led by Alex Campbell with nine.

Tigers 52

Kuna 49

The Tigers battled the Kuna Kavemen tough Friday night at Kuna, holding off the Kavemen in the fourth quarter for a 52-49 win.

The lead went back and fourth in the first quarter, with Chris Smith hitting a trey to give Kuna a 12-11 lead after a quarter.

Mountain Home held the Kavemen to just one field goal and two free throws in the second quarter, and took a 22-16 lead into the locker room at halftime.

Kuna went on a 7-0 run to start the third quarter to go up, 23-22, but Mountain Home cashed in from the free thow line, hitting 8 of 10 -- D.J. Elliott hitting seven of eight -- as the Tigers led 35-28 heading into the fourth quarter.

Mountain Home built its lead to 10 points -- 40-30 -- on a trey by Alex Campbell with 6:30 left, but the Kavemen battled back, cutting the lead to one, 44-43, with 3:00 left.

Alex Campbell hit another three to push the lead to four, 47-43, but Kuna would battle back to within one on three more occasions, before D.J. Elliott hit two free throws with 21 seconds left to make it 52-49, Tigers.

Kuna played for a final shot, but turned the ball over. It got it back on a Mountain Home turnover, however, with three seconds left. After a timeout, the Kavemen got the ball to Andy Murphy, who had hit three of four treys up at that point, but the shot hit the front of the rim and the Tigers prevailed 52-49.

"That's a great win," said a happy Coach Kerfoot after the game. "As I said before the game, any time you come over to Kuna it's going to be a tough ball game, and this one was."

Coach Kerfoot was proud of the way his team kept their composure and held off the Kavemen.

"I've got to compliment the kids on that -- that hasn't been our forte -- and there were definite times we could have lost it, and we held it together, we kept pulling it together, and some guys made some big buckets -- Alex (Campbell) was sitting with four fouls and comes in and hits a three right off the bat, and D.J. (Elliott) did a great job at the free-throw line. Deion (Brown) made some great defensive plays and we had guys stepping up and making plays all the way through and that really helped us."

D.J. Elliott led the Tigers with a season-high 21 points, including 11 of 12 from the free-throw line. Danny Snelgrow also had a new season-high, scoring 11 points. Alex Campbell scored nine points before fouling out. Trevor Woodruff and Deion Brown both scored three points, Logan Monasterio and Chris Maholick each had two points and Dallin Dean scored one to round out the scoring.

The Tigers hit 29 percent (4/14) on treys, 43 percent (12/28) on two-point shots, and shot 73 percent (16/22) from the free throw line.

Kuna shot a hot 46 percent (6/13) of their threes, 34 percent (10/29) inside the arc, and hit 61 percent (11/18) from the charity stripe.

Mountain Home outrebounded Kuna, 27-21, led by D.J. Elliott with nine rebounds.

The win was the Tigers third straight and improved them to 3-5 overall, and 2-1 in conference play. The Tigers were at Skyview last night (Tuesday), and host Columbia tomorrow night (Thursday) in conference action.