There was no lack of talent among the eight teams playing in the Gold Medal B Bracket last week.<\/p>\n
But only one that had all the right pieces to win a championship.<\/p>\n
Haines outscored Hoonah 10-4 in overtime, winning 79-73 Saturday night in the 2017 Lions Club Gold Medal Tournament B Bracket championship. It was the second Hoonah-Haines championship game and third champion from Northern Lynn Canal to be crowned on the day. The Haines women and the Klukwan C Bracket teams also won their respective brackets.<\/p>\n
“It’s just a complete relief more than anything,” Tyler Healy said. “It’s been a decade since Haines has won it and it’s the first one for me personally, the first one for a lot of these younger guys. … I couldn’t ask for anything else man, it’s unreal.”<\/p>\n
Healy, who at 34 was one of the oldest players in the B Bracket, finished with 20 points. Kyle Fossman quietly put up 29 points on a mix of free throws and 3-pointers. Hoonah’s Richard Moore and Jaylin Prince guarded Fossman tight, and the former state high school Gatorade Player of the Year was hit for several offensive fouls.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Torres led all Hoonah scorers with 25 points, followed by Jaylin Prince’s 11 points and Brian Koenig and Charles Carteeti’s 9 apiece.<\/p>\n
Haines jumped out to 10-0 lead before Torres’ offense kicked in. The hulking Hoonah forward, who doesn’t shy away from taking defenders off-the-dribble, scored 15 first-half points to keep his team in the game.<\/p>\n
Hoonah went on a 10-3 run early in the second half, setting up the highly-contentious last 10 minutes of the game as Haines led by six or fewer points the rest of the way.<\/p>\n
“Hoonah played so tough man, those guys, they fed off that crowd for sure, and gosh, took us right down to the wire,” Healy said.<\/p>\n
Torres made both his free throws at 1:32 of the second half that finally abolished Haines’ lead completely. Thirty seconds later DJ Lindstrom’s 3-pointer from the left corner put Hoonah up 68-67, sending the 100-deep Hoonah fan section into a frenzy. It was Lindstrom’s first field goal of the game. The game was sent to overtime after Prince’s last-second shot came up short.<\/p>\n
Ben Egolf scored the first points of overtime on a turn-around jumper, beginning Haines’ 10-4 run to finish out the contest.<\/p>\n
As one of the veterans on the Haines team, having suited up in 10 prior Gold Medals, Healy said his teammates were especially happy for him.<\/p>\n
“They knew that I’d been waiting for this for a long time, and it’s just really awesome,” he said.<\/p>\n
2017 B Bracket Gold Medal All-Tournament Team<\/p>\n
DJ Lindstrom, Hoonah<\/p>\n
Brian Koenig, Hoonah<\/p>\n
Ryan Howell, Wrangell<\/p>\n
Clayton Edwin, Angoon<\/p>\n
Kyle Rush, Haines<\/p>\n
Tyler Healy, Haines<\/p>\n
Ben Egolf, Haines<\/p>\n
Vinny Edenshaw, Hydaburg<\/p>\n
Erik James, Wrangell (Sportsmanship Award)<\/p>\n
MVP: Kyle Fossman, Haines<\/p>\n
Correction: An earlier version of this article omitted Haines player Ben Egolf from the All-Tournament team. Egolf was named to the B Bracket All-Tournament Team. The Empire regrets the error.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There was no lack of talent among the eight teams playing in the Gold Medal B Bracket last week. But only one that had all the right pieces to win a championship. Haines outscored Hoonah 10-4 in overtime, winning 79-73 Saturday night in the 2017 Lions Club Gold Medal Tournament B Bracket championship. It was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":30125,"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-30124","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\/30124","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=30124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30124"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}