On paper, Thunder Mountain point guard Chase Saviers’ stands 5 foot, 8 inches. But the dynamic senior played taller than everyone else Saturday when the Falcons (11-5, 2-0 Southeast) took on crosstown rival Juneau-Douglas (8-8, 0-4 Southeast).<\/p>\n
Saviers scorched the court with 40 points — rattling off 15 straight in the second quarter — to help his team to a 71-61 victory.<\/p>\n
“It started with a couple buckets in the first half that I surprised myself went in,” Saviers said about getting on a roll. “Sometimes you just have that touch.”<\/p>\n
After scoring 27 points the night before, break-out Falcons shooting guard Noah Reishus-O’Brien was held to 11. Saviers, however, was more than happy to pick up where his teammate left off.<\/p>\n
“I mean, what can you say about him, he put up 40 tonight, I just love him, he’s been working his butt of for four years so I’m really proud of him,” said THMS head coach John Blasco. “It’s a team win, even though Chase scored a lot, he complemented everybody else.”<\/p>\n
Erik Kelly had 23 points for the Crimson Bears. Bryce Swofford, coming off the bench for the first time this season, had 14.<\/p>\n
The Falcons led 37-29 at halftime, but showed signs of weakness early in the third quarter. Juneau-Douglas provided full-court pressure on their smaller opponent, jumping passing lanes with their long, outstretched arms. This amounted to several transition buckets for Kelly. After a 6 point first half, the junior exploded for 13 in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
“We made that real nice run to start the second half, and I liked that we were patient offensively and moving the ball,” said JDHS head coach Robert Casperson.<\/p>\n
The Falcons did not fold though, and began taking better care of the ball.<\/p>\n
Undersized but not out-worked, Vaipuna “Puna” Toutaiolepo extended Falcons possessions with hard-fought offensive rebounds. It was just one of many examples of reserve Falcons doing the little things that made a difference in the game.<\/p>\n
“That’s what I talked about in the lockerroom afterwards is that every guy that came in contributed in some way, some how,” said Blasco. “John Morris knocking down the free throws late, [Toutaiolepo] getting those big rebounds late. Zeb Storie as the point guard, he hasn’t been playing a lot of minutes, but he helped break the [full-court press] for us.”<\/p>\n
The Falcons led 51-46 after the third quarter.<\/p>\n
JDHS made it a 60-56 with under 3 minutes to play, but couldn’t convert on open jump shots. The home team made only one 3 point field goal in the game.<\/p>\n
The Crimson Bears were soon forced to foul Thunder Mountain, and TMHS made five consecutive trips to the foul line.<\/p>\n
With 16.6 seconds left and up 5, Thunder Mountain’s Saviers made one of two free throws, enough to reach the scoring milestone.<\/p>\n
“The reality is they are playing good basketball, they know their limits, and they are really good at using their quickness to their advantage,” said Casperson. “Their guards shoot it — last night we struggled with Noah, and tonight we couldn’t stop Chase.”<\/p>\n
Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nolin.ainsworth@juneauempire.com<\/b><\/p>\n
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On paper, Thunder Mountain point guard Chase Saviers’ stands 5 foot, 8 inches. But the dynamic senior played taller than everyone else Saturday when the Falcons (11-5, 2-0 Southeast) took on crosstown rival Juneau-Douglas (8-8, 0-4 Southeast). Saviers scorched the court with 40 points — rattling off 15 straight in the second quarter — to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-11941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11941\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11941"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=11941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}