Late in Tuesday’s 4A Boys Region V basketball tournament first round game, Thunder Mountain High School’s Noah Reishus-O’Brien drove baseline and sent a high-arching floater over Juneau-Douglas’ Erik Kelly’s outstretched arm.<\/p>\n
Bucket. Foul. Fist pump.<\/p>\n
The basket put Thunder Mountain up 18 points and the Falcons would go on to beat JDHS 56-40 Tuesday night.<\/p>\n
Reishus O’Brien scored 16 points to go along with Chase Saviers’ 14 and Garth Tupou’s 8 points. Crimson Bear Kolby Hoover scored 12 points in the losing effort.<\/p>\n
It was just the second game played in the Region V basketball tournament that continues all week and features teams from nine different Southeast Alaska communities.<\/p>\n
The Falcons face off against Ketchikan Wednesday night at 8:15 p.m. in the second round while JDHS awaits Wednesday’s loser on Thursday.<\/p>\n
“They’ve been tested all season with very little days off and practice time,” TMHS head coach John Blasco said. “So I felt like that we’re ready — even though last weekend was tough on us — I felt like they were ready bounce back today and they executed our game plan just how we asked them to.”<\/p>\n
The Falcons dropped both games against JDHS over the weekend. The Crimson Bears defeated the Falcons 46-40 Friday and 58-40 Saturday.<\/p>\n
The Falcons led by three points after the first quarter before going on a 10-0 run to start the second quarter.<\/p>\n
A thunderous steal-and-slam by Kelly around the 2:30 mark would be the final basket in the half as neither team could improve on an 18-10 score.<\/p>\n
The Crimson Bears shot under 25 percent from the field in the first half compared to THMS’s 50 percent.<\/p>\n
Both teams traded buckets in third quarter and Thunder Mountain led 29-20 to start the fourth.<\/p>\n
The Falcons opened the fourth quarter on an 11-0 run as JDHS continued to miss from inside and outside. Reishus-O’Brien went 3-3 from the free throw line and hit a bank shot over two defenders in transition. Two possessions later, Saviers found his senior teammate underneath the basket with a no-look pass for an easy layup, stetching Falcons’ lead to 20 with 4:30 remaining.<\/p>\n
The Crimson Bears continued to execute a full-court press throughout the fourth quarter, despite Thunder Mountain’s willingness to break it.<\/p>\n
Reishus O’Brien would score his final points of the game two minutes later on the hoop-and-harm.<\/p>\n
“Last weekend we never had a lead, we never had a cushion, and it’s harder to play from behind,” said Blasco.<\/p>\n
• Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nolin.ainsworth@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n
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Late in Tuesday’s 4A Boys Region V basketball tournament first round game, Thunder Mountain High School’s Noah Reishus-O’Brien drove baseline and sent a high-arching floater over Juneau-Douglas’ Erik Kelly’s outstretched arm. Bucket. Foul. Fist pump. The basket put Thunder Mountain up 18 points and the Falcons would go on to beat JDHS 56-40 Tuesday night. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":6376,"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-6375","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\/6375","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=6375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6375"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}