Tigers pick up conference win at home versus Nampa

The Mountain Home Tigers picked up a conference win at home against Nampa and fell a bit short of upsetting Kuna High School's Kavemen at Kuna last week.

Tigers 60, Bulldogs 48

The Mountain Home Tigers outscored Nampa 39-24 in the second half Thursday night to down the Bulldogs 60-48 in conference boys basketball action at Lloyd Schiller Gymnasium in Mountain Home.

Mountain Home and Nampa battled each other back and forth in the first quarter, with the score tied at 11-11 after a quarter.

Nampa built up a seven-point lead in the second quarter before the Tigers battled back to within three, 24-21, at halftime.

Mountain Home hit seven of 11 shots from the field in the third quarter to take a 38-32 lead into the fourth period.

The Bulldogs battled back to within two, 40-38, with six minutes left in regulation play, but the Tigers got some clutch baskets and three throws to pull away for the win, 60-48.

Tiger head basketball coach Tony Kerfoot was pleased with the effort by his team.

"That was a great comeback in the second half. I thought the kids started figuring things out. I thought we played hard. That was one thing going in I was worried about -- Nampa playing harder than us, and I think that kind of happened the first half. But I don't think it happened the second half."

The Tigers had four players score in double figures against Nampa.

Tyler Wright led the way with 14 points, Tyler Casey netted 13, Aaron Hobbs had 12 and Anthony Castillo, in his first game back from his knee surgery, tied his season high with 11 points. Anthony Barboza hit for six points while Ricky Castillo and Luke Filipovich both scored two.

Mountain Home connected on 49 percent (22/45) of their shots, hitting two of six treys. They shot 67 percent (14/21) from the free-throw line.

Nampa made nine of 17 three-point shots and six of 15 two-pointers to shoot 47 percent (15/32) from the field. They shot just 47 percent (9/19) from the foul line.

Mountain Home had a 29-17 edge on the boards, led by Tyler Casey with eight rebounds.

Kavemen 56, Tigers 52

The Kuna Kavemen came into Saturday night's conference game at Kuna against the Tigers unbeaten in conference play, having just handed Skyview its first conference loss three nights before.

Mountain Home gave them a tough battle but fell short to the Kavemen, 56-52.

Mountain Home managed a 14-13 lead after a quarter and built the lead to four points in the second before the Kavemen battled back to take a 26-24 lead at halftime.

The Tigers managed to tie the game at 26-26 and 28-28, in the third quarter, but a 13-4 run by Kuna put the Kavemen up, 41-32, heading into the fourth.

Mountain Home battled back and got to within two, 47-45, with 3:28 left in the ball game. However, the Tigers could come no closer as they lost to the Kavemen 56-52.

Despite the loss, Coach Kerfoot saw lots of good things by his team in their efforts and "battled real well," he said.

"Coming in, we told them we need to keep them under 55 and we've got to go a little over 55, and we just missed that," the coach added. "It was close. We came over on the road, we handled some adversity against the top team in the league, and we're very, very close!

"We're knocking on the door. We easily could have done some things different. To have our leading scorer taken out of the game with two fouls in the first 30 seconds of the game, where he barely even made contact with anybody, that's one adversity to hang on to.

"They shot the ball extremely well, but we did too, early. We have a new aspect to our game as far as the outside shooting. The perimeter shooting -- we haven't been seeing that -- and we came out and shot with them for a while and actually, that first quarter, shot better than them, so I was happy to see that. That's starting to shine, and we're still a little bit of a work in progress (but) I think we're not far off."

Anthony Barboza led the Tigers with 15 points, including three treys. Tyler Casey netted 10 points, Anthony Castillo and Aaron Hobbs both scored eight, Tyler Wright added four points, J.T. Cristobal scored three, and Ricky Castillo and Justin Connolly both had two points.

Mountain Home shot 38 percent (21/55) from the field, including 6/9 on three-pointers. They shot 57 percent (4/7) from the charity stripe.

Kuna put up three more treys (28) than they did twos (25) hitting 20 of 53 shots (38 percent), including nine of their three-point attempts.

Kuna won the battle of the boards,34-29. Aaron Hobbs led the Tigers with eight rebounds.

The Tigers are now 4-7 on the season and 2-4 in league play. They hosted Columbia Tuesday night and travel to Skyview Friday night.