Boys basketball: Roughriders hold off Ottumwa's charge

Feb. 1—OTTUMWA — Lightning in a bottle.

That's what the Ottumwa High School boys basketball team has seemingly tried to catch in the second half of their last three games. Sometimes, as was the case on Friday night against Des Moines North, that lightning is enough to charge a winning effort for the Bulldogs.

Other times, as was the case on Monday, those brief spurts are not enough to push Ottumwa to a comeback win. Des Moines Roosevelt dodged two late opportunities for the Bulldogs to erase a 10-point deficit in the final minute of regulation as a potential 3-point jumper by Allen Cook fell short with eight seconds left before Ottumwa's 18th turnover on the ensuing possession helped the Roughriders ultimately close out a 56-52 Metro road win at Evans Middle School Gymnasium.

Jaekwon Bradley and Sam King combined to score 30 points for Roosevelt. Bradley fouled out midway through the fourth quarter with a team-leading 17 points while King went to the bench with his fifth foul after scoring five straight points in the final three minutes to give the Roughriders a 55-45 lead.

"You can't wait until the final six minutes of the game to start playing basketball," Ottumwa head boys basketball coach Neil Hartz said. "We missed lay-ups, turned the ball over and didn't play as well as we're clearly capable of. If we played the entire game the way we played those last six minutes, we're talking about a totally different result."

Adam Greiner led Ottumwa with a game-high 24 points, rallying the Bulldogs who faced a second-half deficit for the third consecutive game. After finding Rahsha Pope for a lay-up following a steal, Greiner drove down the court off a defensive rebound by Cook for a basket that brought a Roosevelt lead that had swelled to 13 points down to three with 6:23 left.

George Williams scored on a cutback to put the Roughriders up five before Greiner drove in again cutting the lead down to 48-45. Bradley than drove the baseline for a scoop shot, the first of seven straight points for the Roosevelt to seemingly put the game away.

"It just comes down to a lack of effort at the beginning of the game," Greiner said. "About halfway through the first quarter, there was no effort. Once that starts, it's hard to get out of that mood. You can't just go from 75 percent to 100 percent easily. We need that effort we had in the fourth quarter at the start. It's a combination of figuring out how to get that spark that we find in the second half and bring it forward to the first half while also playing hard together as a team from the very first minute."

Ottumwa had to battle not just a tough Roosevelt squad, but early technical fouls including a pair of double technicals in the first quarter causing the Bulldogs to keep their emotions even more in check. Ironically, the same technical calls that might have hindered Ottumwa's rhythm in the first half almost helped the Bulldogs rally in the final minute as a technical foul on the Roughriders after fouling Greiner on a three-point shot led to a seven-point Ottumwa possession with four made free throws by Greiner and corner 3-pointer by Cook on the ensuing possession, bringing Ottumwa back within 55-52 with 50 seconds left.

Roosevelt (5-9, 5-5 CIML Metro) turned the ball over on their next possession, giving Ottumwa the ball with 18.7 seconds to go. After a timeout, Greiner found Cook who launched a contested 3-pointer from the top of the key that bounced off the front of the rim.

Jaren Lewis grabbed the defensive rebound and drew a foul with 6.8 seconds left, but missed the front end of a 1-and-1 free throw. Greiner forced a jump ball after an offensive rebound by George Williams, but Shakur Pope misfired on a pass to Cale Leonard in the back court. Lewis would sink the clinching free throw with 2.7 seconds to go.

"I know we're a better team. Right now, we're kind of our own worst enemies," Hartz said. "We got good looks down low early. We let King and Bradley score 30 points when we made it our goal to slow them down. We still get a chance to tie it up. We drew two plays and didn't run them. It is what it is. When you run a guy and one guy doesn't do what they're supposed to do it doesn't work. Those two plays hurt us, but they're not the reason we lost this game."

Ottumwa (6-10, 4-4 CIML Metro) returns to the floor Tuesday night in West Des Moines at Dowling Catholic.

— Scott Jackson can be reached at sjackson@ottumwacourier.com. Follow him on Twitter@CourierScott.