{"id":91282,"date":"2019-12-17T04:43:19","date_gmt":"2019-12-17T04:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-basketball-rallies-past-mancos\/"},"modified":"2019-12-17T04:43:19","modified_gmt":"2019-12-17T04:43:19","slug":"durango-basketball-rallies-past-mancos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/durango-basketball-rallies-past-mancos\/","title":{"rendered":"Durango basketball rallies past Mancos"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Sam
Sam Johnson of Durango High School fends off the defense of Mancos\u2019 Show Showalter on Monday night at DHS.<\/span>Courtesy of Snap Click Print Photography<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A game that had gone the way of the Mancos Blue Jays for the better part of three quarters suddenly turned in the direction of the Durango Demons on Monday night.<\/p>\n

Powered by the 3-point shooting of Anthony Flint, the interior play of Martin Cuntz and Haezen Mestas and a few timely layups from Jordan Woolverton, the Durango High School boys basketball team erased a double-digit third-quarter deficit and took a 48-46 lead on a Flint 3-pointer with 4 minutes, 33 seconds to play in the fourth quarter. DHS would extend that lead to 58-47 with 2:30 to play. That was enough to hold off one final charge from the visiting Blue Jays on Monday night inside the DHS gymnasium, as the Demons (5-3) captured a 61-58 victory.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe fought back hard after we dug ourselves a hole in that first half,\u201d Flint said. \u201cGetting stops and pushing the ball, we thought we could make them tired and take advantage of that. Pushing in transition, getting the crowd with us really gets us going and gave us that second wind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flint made six 3-pointers against Mancos (3-2) for the second consecutive season, as he finished with 18 points. He made two big 3s in the second half. He said the zone defense of Mancos allowed him to get a few clear looks he liked from outside.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, it was kind of the same deal where I think he had a season high against us,\u201d Mancos head coach Elijah Knepper said of Flint. \u201cOn the scouting report, our top guy is Flint. It says, \u2018Shooter, one of their two best players, cannot let him get hot, cannot lose track of where he is.\u2019 We know he\u2019s a really good player, don\u2019t get me wrong, but I felt like, defensively, we were bad for a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martin Cuntz had a big night inside for Durango, as he played tough defense on Mancos\u2019 Caden Showalter and also scored 15 points, including seven in the fourth quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was crazy. We really had to execute exactly what we were doing on the court,\u201d Cuntz said. \u201cThe biggest thing for us is we gotta keep the energy. If we\u2019re down and down have energy, we\u2019re not able to do anything. Our bench kept us up, kept our spirits up and that energy we took late in the third quarter helped us chip away in the fourth quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Woolverton came up with seven of his own fourth-quarter points and finished with 12. It was the five points all in the fourth quarter from Mestas that also excited the Demons.<\/p>\n

\"Mancos\u2019
Mancos\u2019 Hunter Goodwin pushes the ball up the floor Monday in a game at Durango High School.<\/span>Courtesy of Snap Click Print Photography<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cHaezen was amazing running up and down the floor, getting big stops and some baskets we needed in a big game,\u201d Flint said.<\/p>\n

It was the shooting of Flint and Sam Johnson that kept Durango in the game in the first half. Flint made two of his 3s in the second quarter, and Johnson also had two first-half 3s. He scored eight points, all in the first half.<\/p>\n

Caden Showalter finished with 13 points for Mancos. With 16 seconds to play and Mancos set to inbound the ball from under its own basket with a 60-58 deficit, Knepper drew up a play to get him the ball down low. But his bank shot was too strong, and Flint came up with a tough rebound. He threw the ball away, but it somehow found the hands of Woolverton, who raced up the floor and was fouled with five seconds to play. He made 1-of-2 shots at the foul line, and a last-second halfcourt shot from Mancos\u2019 Edgar Hernandez went off the top of the backboard to end the game.<\/p>\n

Connor Showalter scored 18 points to lead the Blue Jays. Hunter Goodwin added 12 points with eight in the first quarter. Hernandez finished with seven points.<\/p>\n

The Blue Jays were unhappy to not avenge a 48-42 home loss to Durango a year earlier.<\/p>\n

Next up for Mancos is a 7 p.m. Thursday road game at Montezuma-Cortez.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t do moral victories,\u201d Knepper said. \u201cWe wanted it bad. Last year, it was a six-point game that was close to the very end just like this one. Unfortunate it came down this way, but we gotta get back on the horse. We got a big one with Cortez this week. It\u2019s doesn\u2019t get any easier.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Demons will travel to the Mitchell tournament and open with Englewood at 6 p.m. Friday. It will be Durango\u2019s first time tested outside the Four Corners this season.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are getting good experience around here against the teams in the region that want to beat us since we are that big school down here,\u201d Flint said. \u201cIt\u2019s good competition.\u201d<\/p>\n

jlivingston@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

six 3s in Demons win<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[600,592,28,37,29,427],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-91282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-basketball","tag-durango-high-school","tag-headlines","tag-mancos-high-school","tag-newsletter","tag-prep-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91282","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=91282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91282"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=91282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}