The Mancos Blue Jays used a 24-12 third-quarter run to pull away from the Dove Creek Bulldogs on Tuesday in a 72-65 win.
Andrew Christensen scored all 10 of the Blue Jays’ first-quarter points, and Ro Paschal scored eight in the second, but Dove Creek pounded the ball inside and went into halftime with a 26-25 lead.
Scott Gatlin had six first-half points in the paint, and Beau Hemphill added five, while point guard Jordan Ernst attacked the basket and backed down defender Adrian Hernandez, using his size advantage on isolations to score nine in the first half.
“Offensively, we were wanting to get it in the paint and use some of our bigger guys,” said Dove Creek head coach Ty Gray. “Our outside shooting has been struggling a bit so we didn’t want to live out there.”
Mancos started the third quarter in a 1-3-1 zone, then mixed in a 3-2 zone and 2-3 zone.
“Just something different,” Mancos coach Rodney Cox said. “They get in a pattern, and somebody gets hot ... we just try to switch it up to make them make different decisions.”
The switches created Dove Creek turnovers, as Gray said the Bulldogs were unable to find a rhythm, and the Blue Jays made a point to push the tempo and get fastbreak points in the second half.
“That was our plan from the start,” Cox said. “We’re a bunch of cross-country runners. We’re in shape, we can run all day, and we need to take advantage of that.”
“I would have liked it slowed down a little bit more,” Gray said. “It was just that we had some turnovers that kept happening up at the top of the key. Bad passes that turned into some quick easy baskets for them. So that definitely didn’t favor us at all.”
When they weren’t scoring in transition, Mancos got the ball to its high post, which resulted in skip-passes from Paschal and Andrew Plunkett for open three-pointers on three occasions. Plunkett also dropped in a three in the third quarter.
“We were just trying to get our big guys some looks inside,” Cox said. “The only touches they really got in the first half were ones they earned on their own.”
Outscoring the Bulldogs 24-12 in the third, Mancos entered the fourth with a 49-38 lead.
Dove Creek narrowed the gap to five early, but it jumped back to as much as 14 before a Dove Creek run narrowed it to 67-62 with 33 seconds left.
Mancos free throws down the stretch kept them on top, and a three-pointer at the buzzer by Kyle Schultz narrowed the margin, with the Blue Jays holding on, 72-65.
Christensen led the Blue Jays with 23 points, Paschal scored 14, and Hernandez and Andrew Plunkett each added 13.
Ernst was the Bulldogs’ high scorer with 17, Gatlin chipped in 13, Hemphill scored 11 and Ryan Delano added 10.
