Montezuma-Cortez High School staged a determined fourth-quarter rally in Bayfield on Tuesday night, but with the clock winding down, the Wolverines swished a three-pointer to win.<\/p>\n
Even Bayfield head coach Jeff Lehnus rolled his eyes in disbelief.<\/p>\n
The Panthers had made an impressive comeback after a 21-point third quarter by Bayfield that seemed to close the door on the Panthers at the Bayfield High School gym.<\/p>\n
The Panthers entered the fourth trailing 36-30 after a Bayfield\u2019s fast third-quarter finish.<\/p>\n
Bayfield started the fourth with a basket, but the Panthers\u2019 Quanah Casey (6 points) and junior Obed Simental (9 points) contributed three-pointers to tie the game at 41.<\/p>\n
Braden Keetch (8 points) put Montezuma-Cortez up 45-43 with 4:04 remaining. A tough leaner in the lane by Bayfield junior forward Ryan Phelps tied the game at 45 with 1:10 left. With 30 seconds left, Phelps whipped a no-look pass from the top of the arc down to sophomore forward Hayden Farmer about three feet from the rim, and Farmer\u2019s easy conversion put Bayfield up by two.<\/p>\n
M-CHS junior Jasen Engel, who logged a team-high 16 points despite being the focus of the Bayfield defense, coldly canned two free throws with 0:12 remaining to tie the contest again at 47-47.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t enough.<\/p>\n
Bayfield\u2019s Keyon Prior took control of the ball, but the Panthers defense forced him to look for help. Popping out from the foul line to the three-point arc, Phelps was Prior\u2019s only option.<\/p>\n
With the clock zeroing out, and receiving Prior\u2019s pass under pressure, Phelps forced up a flat three-pointer that swished the net for the win in 3A Intermountain League action.<\/p>\n
The fans stampeded the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, that\u2019s the way we plan it every night-to have to make a game-winning shot!\u201d Bayfield coach Lehnus deadpanned afterward.<\/p>\n
\u201cGive Cortez credit,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a good team; we didn\u2019t underestimate them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phelps finished with a game-best 17. He had all of Bayfield\u2019s first-quarter points as M-CHS slow-played their way to a three-point lead after eight minutes. After two fouls sent Phelps to the bench, the Panthers (5-10, 2-4 IML) increased their lead to 19-15 at the half.<\/p>\n
\u201cCame out shooting pretty good, had pretty good defense, but there was nothing we could really do with great shooters like them,\u201d Casey lamented.<\/p>\n
From the free-throw line, Bayfield was 8-of-9 and Montezuma-Cortez was 10-18.<\/p>\n
Joel Priest, of the Pine River Times, reported this story from Bayfield.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Three-pointer caps a thriller<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[600,1871,21,36,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-73156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-basketball","tag-bayfield-high-school","tag-cortez","tag-montezuma-cortez-high-school","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73156","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=73156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73156"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=73156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}