While the Bears\u2019 shift in defensive scheme was nearly enough to carry them to victory, their comeback attempt was ultimately stymied by Ouray senior Jackson Leo, who scored a game-high 22 points and kept Dolores defenders on their heels throughout the night.<\/p>\n
Among the 5-feet-5-inch guard\u2019s most impressive stretches came during an opening quarter scoring display that saw him drain two long 3-point field goals and knock down two difficult after fearless drives into the lane to give his team a 12-10 lead after eight minutes of play.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrowing up, I was always a small kid,\u201d Leo said. \u201cOnce I get on the court, I don\u2019t really see height, I see skill. I think at the end of the day, skill prevails.\u201d<\/p>\n
After tying the game at 12 on a baseline layup by senior Justin Brunner and again at 14 after on pretty post move and layup by senior Keegan Spurlock, Dolores struggled to contain the Trojans and entered halftime trailing 28-18.<\/p>\n
A 3-pointer by Leo midway through the third quarter made the score 39-28 in favor of Ouray before a six straight points by Dolores junior Ryan Nowlin energized home fans and narrowed the Dolores gap to 39-34. \u201cI always try to put in my effort,\u201d Nowlin said. \u201cIn a close game like this, you really need to step it up and give it all you got. The second half, we definitely started to pull it together. Coach told us at halftime that we needed to step up the intensity, and that\u2019s exactly what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the energy of Dolores players continued to grow and the crowd noise inside the gymnasium increased, the Bears continued to find holes in Ouray\u2019s defense as senior Kevin Purkat banked in a difficult layup off the glass and scored a transition layup to cut the Trojans lead to 48-42.<\/p>\n
Another great move and finish by Spurlock in the paint made the score 48-44 and a layup by Dolores senior Wyatt Koskie moments later made the score 48-46 with just over three minutes left in the game.<\/p>\n
As Leo tried desperately to keep his team ahead with fearless drives to the basket and pretty passes to open teammates, Dolores fans voiced their disapproval every time Ouray\u2019s energetic guard touched the ball and jeered loudly every time he missed a shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was able to feed off that,\u201d said Leo. \u201cIt was really nice to be able to have fans in here. It\u2019s our first game that has had fans since last March. The energy was really good, and there was some friendly trash talk that made the game better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Down 51-48 with 21 seconds left, Dolores drew closer after Hayden Tallmadge was fouled and knocked down one of his two free throws. After Leo missed a free throw with 14 seconds left, the Bears had a chance to win, but saw what would have been a game-winning 3-pointer by Seekins glance off the left iron.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a play, but it didn\u2019t work out,\u201d Schmitt said. \u201cIt was probably a bad play on my part. I thought we had run another play often enough that a decoy would free (Seekins) up for a three. When it fell apart, I should\u2019ve called time out. The end of the game was on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Leading the way offensively for Dolores in the loss were Nowlin, with 12 points, Spurlock with eight, and Koskie, Seekins and Purkat with six. Ouray was led offensively by Leo\u2019s 22 points and Kaden Nelson\u2019s 16.<\/p>\n
With their record now at 4-5 overall and 3-3 in the San Juan Basin League, Dolores will prepare for a tough road matchup against SJBL powerhouse Ignacio on Feb. 23.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere has only been one game this year where we haven\u2019t been competitive,\u201d Schmitt said. \u201cWe\u2019ve lost two overtime games, and we were close in every game except Mancos. I know we can beat anybody in our league, but we\u2019re going to have to have a good enough record to get into the playoffs and that\u2019s going to be a challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Game-winning shot attempt by Tru Seekins clangs off the rim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48428,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[600,38,28,29,1489,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-48427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-basketball","tag-dolores-high-school","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-ouray","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87377,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48427\/revisions\/87377"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48427"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=48427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}