The Juneau-Douglas High School boys basketball team left no room for an upset to Thunder Mountain High School on Friday, beating their crosstown rivals by a 19-point margin for the Region V 4A title and a trip to the state tournament.<\/p>\n
The Crimson Bears won 67-48, leading from the opening minute to the final buzzer in a game where the Falcons couldn\u2019t generate much offense. The state\u2019s No. 1-ranked Crimson Bears resolved to play their best defense in the title match, according to head coach Robert Casperson.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe teammates want to focus on each other, which is what I tell them because that allows them to forget about the crowd or the situation; whether it\u2019s rotating on defense, setting screens, that\u2019s been our focus for the last couple of weeks,\u201d he said, adding that the \u201ccomradery with this group is second to none. They\u2019ve come a long way.\u201d<\/p>\n
JDHS was led by senior Kaleb Tompkins with 21 points. Junior Bryce Swofford followed Tompkins with 14 and senior Treyson Ramos added 12.<\/p>\n
TMHS was led by junior Chase Saviers with 19 points. Saviers was TMHS\u2019 focal point on offense, as no other Falcon scored more than seven points.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody knows he\u2019s our go-to guy this season,\u201d Falcons coach John Blasco said. \u201cHe\u2019s a fierce competitor and doesn\u2019t want to lose. He hit a three in the second and he knew he had the green light to try another. He ended up with three in the quarter. That was huge for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
TMHS earned their only lead off a Saviers free throw to open the game. JDHS established a 27-10 lead in the second, but the Falcons would trim that to 33-23 by half off the hot hands of Saviers.<\/p>\n
The Crimson Bears have let leads dwindle in the third and fourth quarters this year, letting Ketchikan, Thunder Mountain and Mt. Edgecumbe back into regular-season games they should have put away. JDHS had no intentions of jeopardizing their lead in the region title game, however, as Bryce Swofford deflected an inbounds pass, stormed down the court and scored on an and-one play to start the third quarter.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat really set the tone for us in the second half, and our guys fed off that initial play with our defense,\u201d Casperson said.<\/p>\n
JDHS would hold Thunder Mountain to nine points in the third while scoring 17 of their own to go up 50-32 by the start of the fourth quarter. The Falcons closed the game with their best scoring period, putting up 16, but couldn\u2019t slow down JDHS, who scored 17 in the final period.<\/p>\n
The Crimson Bears earned the right to play in the March Madness Alaska State Championship starting March 24. Eight teams will converge on Anchorage to find out who is Alaska\u2019s best 4A squad.<\/p>\n
Casperson said his team isn\u2019t finished yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of their goals this season was to win the region and get to state,\u201d he said. \u201cSome groups get really excited, and these guys really enjoyed this win, but they\u2019re still looking forward. They know there\u2019s more out there and more available to them. They\u2019re still hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n
TMHS coach John Blasco wished JDHS luck.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wish them all the best up in state,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re excited for them to go in as a top seed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Juneau-Douglas High School boys basketball team left no room for an upset to Thunder Mountain High School on Friday, beating their crosstown rivals by a 19-point margin for the Region V 4A title and a trip to the state tournament. The Crimson Bears won 67-48, leading from the opening minute to the final buzzer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":26284,"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-26283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26283","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\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26283"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=26283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}