Fourth quarter collapses prove costly to Tigers

The Mountain Home Tigers continue to be a work in progress. One of their big problems has been putting together together four quarters of good basketball.

They are getting there, but now it's all about finishing ball games. Fourth quarter collapses did the Tigers in both Friday and Saturday night against Bishop Kelly and Emmett.

Bishop Kelly 51, Mountain Home 48

The Mountain Home Tigers let a 21-point lead in the third quarter get away from them Friday night as they dropped a 51-48 conference contest to the Bishop Kelly Knights in Lloyd Schiller Gymnasium.

The Tigers started strong and shot out to a 17-8 first-quarter lead. They took a 27-14 lead into the locker room at halftime.

A 9-0 run midway through the third quarter put the Tigers up 38-17 with 4:33 left in the quarter. That's when momentum gradually started swinging toward Bishop Kelly, as the Knights went on a 17-2 run the rest of the quarter to cut the Tiger lead to 40-32 heading into the fourth.

The Knights got the Tigers out of their offensive flow, and meanwhile hit three straight three-pointers in the first three minutes of the fourth, to take a 41-40 lead.

Anthony Barboza hit a basket to put the Tigers back ahead, 42-41 with 4:55 left, but Jesse Rohr countered with a basket to put the Knights up 43-42. A basket and free throw by Andy Harrington extended the Bishop Kelly lead to 46-42, with 4:28 left.

Mountain Home narrowed the gap to 46-45 on a basket and free throw by Tyler Wright with 2:48 left.

With 24.4 seconds left, the Tigers had the ball out of bounds underneath their basket, trailing 50-48, and ended up turning the ball over on the inbounds play.

Trailing 51-48 with 10.5 seconds left, the Tigers went for a three-point shot that was blocked out of bounds. With 3.5 seconds left they got off a three-point shot from the corner that failed to drop and lost 51-48.

"I thought we did a lot of good things, particularly early in the game," said Coach Kerfoot. "Then they throw a couple different things at us -- a little half-court trap on us and full-court press, and we forget where our focus is, and instead of playing like we had a 20-point lead, we start panicking and we hurried.

"A John Wooden quote that I put on the board before the game was, 'be quick, but don't hurry.' When we went in the locker room after the game, I just circled it, and that's exactly what that's about. I thought we really rushed ourselves, we rushed shots, we rushed possessions, and then we fouled, and that kind of preserved the clock for them. That last quarter and a half, we kind of lost focus of where we were going."

Tyler Knight and Aaron Hobbs both scored in double figures for the Tigers. Wright had 15 and Hobbs 10. J.T. Cristobal added eight points, Anthony Castillo five, Anthony Barboza four, and Tyler Casey and Ricky Castillo both scored three.

The Tigers shot 43 percent (21/49) from the field, hitting four of 11 (32 percent) long balls, but only hit 29 percent (2/7) free throws.

Bishop Kelly shot 40 percent (19/47) from the floor, including five of 12 (42 percent) from downtown. They went to the free-throw line 24 times, but converted only eight of them (33 percent).

Mountain Home won the rebound battle 32-22, with Tyler Wright bringing down 14.

Emmett 39, Mountain Home 37

In a game much like Friday night's game, the Tigers watched one get away from them as Brandon Aristo scored in the closing seconds to lift the Emmett Huskies to a 39-37 win over the Tigers Saturday night at Emmett.

Mountain Home went on a 7-0 run in the first quarter to build up a 12-5 lead. They led 12-7 after one, and continued to play well in the second quarter, building up a 24-11 lead at the half.

The Tigers enjoyed their biggest lead of the game, 30-14, with 5:05 left in the third quarter, but managed only two points the rest of the quarter, while Emmett got two treys from Tobin Gordon to cut the lead to 32-21, heading into the fourth.

Emmett whittled the deficit to 32-26 before J.T. Cristobal scored to push the lead to 34-26 with 3:22 left.

A trey by Brandon Aristo shaved the lead to 34-29 and a steal and two free throws by Tucker Hyde made it 34-31, Mountain Home, with three minutes left in the game.

With 2:03 left, the Tigers had a chance to extend their lead when Emmett's Jimmy Bassett was called for an intentional foul for knocking Tyler Wright to the floor. Wright missed both free throws, but with the intentional foul the Tigers got the ball out of bounds. They took a shot but it failed to fall. Adam Guerra was fouled on the rebound and hit one of two free throws to make it 34-32, Mountain Home, with 1:55 left.

Aaron Hobbs scored to push the lead to 36-32 with 1:44 left.

Tucker Hyde came down and scored on a runner to cut the lead back to two, 36-34, with 1:20 left.

With 1:07 left, Ricky Castillo missed the front end of a one-and one with the Huskies getting the rebound. Brandon Aristo hit an open three from the corner to give the Huskies the lead, 37-36, with 40 seconds left in the game.

J.T. Cristobal was fouled with 37 seconds left, and hit one of two free throws to tie the game at 37-37.

Emmett came down and played for a final shot, Brandon Aristo left open again in the corner. His shot did not fall, and after a missed attempt, Aristo gathered in the rebound and kissed it off the glass as time ran out for a 39-37 Emmett win.

"Another one," said Coach Kerfoot after the game. "I don't know. We just didn't make plays down the stretch. You know, in some cases I think maybe we wanted it too bad. I know there in the end, we stretched two guys up at the top and leave the corner wide open so a guy gets an uncontested look at the basket and misses, but we're in no position to rebound.

"It's just little things like that at inopportune times, we're not getting folks to stay in the right places all the time. Hats off to Emmett because they made some plays enough to where they made it count."

The loss, the Tigers' third straight, puts them at 3-7 in league play and 5-10 overall. They host Middleton Thursday night and travel to Nampa Friday night, both games conference matchups. Coach Kerfoot hopes his guys can bounce back.

"It doesn't matter where you go in the league, anybody on any given night can beat anybody else, and we've played some good ball, we just don't play four quarters of it. Hopefully the kids can hang in there and keep working, because I don't think we're that far away, we've just got to learn how to finish."

The Tigers close out their regular season schedule next week, hosting Kuna on Feb. 9, hosting Wood River for Senior Night on Feb. 11 and traveling to Columbia on Feb. 12.