Saints men lose battle at the buzzer

The Saints men’s basketball team battled Wednesday night at home against the Clark College Penguins before falling, 71-69, in the final seconds of the game.

With the Saints trailing by three, 69-66, and less than two minutes remaining, the Mt. Hood crowd is uneasy. Just six minutes earlier, the Saints were leading by as much as 10 points and it seemed they had control of the game. Now the tide has turned and the student section knows it. Clark is coming off three possessions in a row where the Penguins finished inside with easy layups. And the Saints know, too, that at this point the wheels have fallen off.

Then it happens: With 1:20 left, Saints sophomore guard Elijah Fuller pulls up for three. The moment his elbow is bent, the entire student section leaps to its feet. Fuller had already hit two clutch threes earlier in the half to extend the Saints lead. As the ball spins through the air everyone knows it is going in, and it does… but as the ball splashes through the net, a whistle blows.

The referees called a moving screen on the offense. After the game, Fuller commented on the call.

“(I) never knew (there could be) a moving screen (call), when you don’t use a screen. I’ve just never heard of that,” he said.

Back to the action: With the team still trailing by three, they’d need a defensive stop, and they get one. Again, the Saints bring the ball down court, now with just under one minute left to play. Fuller, like a man on a mission, drives straight into the lane. As he goes up in the air to lay it in, he draws a foul.

At the line he hits his first free throw, but misses the second. That pulls the Saints within two, with 40 seconds remaining.

Again the Saints find a way to get stop, and now with under 20 seconds left, they must find a way to score.

Mt. Hood rushes the ball up court and finds forward Cody Thompson down low. He pump fakes twice, forcing the defenders around him to leap ahead of him. With his defenders off-balance he lays in the game-tying bucket.

Of course, the joy of his shot lasted for less than 10 seconds as Clark went to the other end, got the ball to their post player, who layed up the game-winning shot.

The Saints technically still had time to get off one shot, with .5 seconds remaining, but after a full-court inbounds pass was deflected,  they were unable to do so.

After the game, Mt. Hood sophomore guard Trent Baker said, “We played good the first half but we just didn’t execute in the second half… We need to play the full 40 minutes and we’ll win the game.”

Fuller ended the game with a team-high 16 points on an impressive 6-for-8 shooting. Thompson finished with 12 points and seven rebounds.

In the end, the loss dropped the Saints to 3-5 in South Division play, and to 9-9 overall. They are now seventh in the South.

The good news? Three of the teams ahead of them are tied for fourth, with only a one-game lead on them.

The Saints’ next game is at 4 p.m.  Saturday against Lane Community College at home.