At half time, it was anyone\u2019s game. By the end of the third, it was all but over.<\/p>\n
The Thunder Mountain High School Falcons cranked up its defense Thursday to best the Petersburg Vikings 53-40 on the Vikings home court during the Little Norway Tournament, starting its season with a bang.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s such a new group from last year,\u201d head coach John Blasco said. \u201cI wasn\u2019t really sure what to expect.\u201d<\/p>\n
Junior guard Chase Saviers led the Falcons with 15 points and was among three players to hit double digits, with sophomore wing Luke Clark and senior point guard RJ Manning adding 10 each. Junior forward Mahina Toupaiolepo added seven points on the night.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re small, so we tried to run some but not as much as we hoped to,\u201d Blasco said. \u201cPetersburg slowed us down some.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blasco said he was pleased with how well his team moved the ball and their overall shot selection from the floor.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t force many shots,\u201d he said. \u201cWe just didn\u2019t shoot a very high percentage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Falcons trailed 29-26 at the half but got a push from Manning and Clark in the second half, each scoring eight apiece. <\/p>\n
The Falcons held the Vikings to just 11 points in the second half, giving up just two baskets in the third quarter. Five of Petersburg\u2019s seven fourth-quarter points came from the free throw line.<\/p>\n
The Vikings\u2019 Stewart Conn led all scorers with 17 points, but was held to just five in the second half.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe scored when he wanted to,\u201d Blasco said of Conn, who played his freshman year at Juneau-Douglas High School. \u201cPetersburg will have a really nice team this season, they have a lot of potential.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Falcons\u2019 coach said he saw the usual \u201cfirst game jitters and miscues\u201d but \u201cI\u2019m happy, it\u2019s always nice to get the win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thunder Mountain has a shorter team than in years\u2019 past, and said the key to facing taller teams will be using speed, blocking out and playing tough defense in the post.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to have our hands full playing teams like JD and Ketchikan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Nine players traveled to Petersburg for the weekend tournament, and Blasco said there are four more players \u201cwho we have to see how they play into the mix.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Falcons will compete at 2:45 p.m. today against Cordova. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At half time, it was anyone\u2019s game. By the end of the third, it was all but over. The Thunder Mountain High School Falcons cranked up its defense Thursday to best the Petersburg Vikings 53-40 on the Vikings home court during the Little Norway Tournament, starting its season with a bang. \u201cIt\u2019s such a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":30907,"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-30906","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\/30906","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\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30906"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}