Mountain Ridge holds on to beat Southern, 66-64

Jan. 5—FROSTBURG — Mountain Ridge held off a last-second comeback attempt to defeat Southern 66-64 on Wednesday night.

"It was a great win for us," Mountain Ridge head coach Tim Nightengale said. "We're a team that's really working on executing things, down the stretch we executed. Real proud of our kids tonight for the way they finished down the stretch."

The Miners (4-3, 1-3 WestMAC) won without making a 3-pointer. The Rams (3-3, 0-1 WestMAC) were led by Jared Haskiell and Isaiah Keller who combined for 49 points.

"Mountain Ridge isn't in football mode anymore, they played pretty well," Southern head coach Tom Bosley said. "A lot better than they've played so far. They've got quickness, they've got speed. Those are things we're trying to work on competing with."

Mountain Ridge led 9-6 midway through the first quarter. Keller quickly tied the game at 9-all after he hit three shots from beyond the arc. Keller scored the first nine points for Southern.

Early on, the Rams relied on the long ball offensively. Keller and Haskiell combined for four made 3s in the quarter. Southern did not score inside the arc until Noah Wilt hit a jumper with 1:17 left in the quarter.

"Sometimes threes are all we can get because of our lack of size," Bosley said. "We don't go in thinking we need to shoot threes. There are certain people allowed to shoot them. When those guys get wide open threes, we're gonna take them."

To begin the game, the Miners were led offensively by Peyton Miller. He scored five points in the first quarter along with four assists.

"He does a little bit of everything," Nightengale said. "He might be the biggest kid on the floor, but he's a guard by nature. We want him to play more inside, but he sees the floor well. He's able to distribute the ball well, post up when he wants to."

Mountain Ridge also forced several turnovers early off of steals. Uma Pua'auli had three steals in the first quarter and five points.

"That's huge, we try to have our kids hustle all the time." Nightengale said. "Those hustle plays lead to more possessions that lead to more opportunities to score. We were able to capitalize on that."

After back-and-forth scoring to end the first quarter, the Miners' offense took over in the second. Mountain Ridge opened the quarter on a 9-5 run and led 27-21 with 3:55 left.

Trailing 33-26 with 1:53 to go, the Rams outscored the Miners 8-2 to end the half. Mountain Ridge held on to a 35-34 lead at the break.

"We had players out that we'd love to score," Bosley said. "We're trying to add to our numbers of people that can score the ball. It's gotta increase or we'll be a couple people offense and that won't be successful."

The third quarter featured back-and-forth scoring by both teams. The Miners outscored Southern 18-14 in the period. After two quick lead changes, the Rams went on an 8-5 spurt midway through to tie the game at 46.

"We got ourselves strategically in places to get shots that we wanted with certain people shooting them," Bosley said. "We were able to do that. They were in foul trouble so we tried to take advantage of that. We happened to make shots, we got the right people shooting."

To end the quarter, Mountain Ridge went on a 7-2 run. It included a difficult and-one fadeaway by Tyson Shumaker to extend the Miners lead to five.

Southern's offense began the fourth quarter on a cold stretch. It only scored two points in the first two-and-a-half minutes. However, the Rams kept it a one-score game midway through. Haskiell hit his third shot from deep to cut the Rams' deficit to 56-53.

Leading 63-62 with 37.8 seconds left, Miller hit a tough floater to increase the Miners lead to three points. Andrew Ketterman went to the line with 1.2 seconds left and made one of two shots.

On the ensuing inbound, Ketterman knocked the pass out of bounds and off of Southern. It gave the ball back to Mountain Ridge to seal the win.

"That's huge, whenever you can get that and be able to secure the ball when you've got the lead, that's big," Nightengale said. "Real proud of our kids and the way they finished it tonight."

For the Rams, Haskiell finished with 25 points to lead all scorers. Keller scored 24 and both players hit six 3-pointers.

"They're the guys we have to have score the basketball," Bosley said. "There'll be a lot of teams in the area to take those things away. That's why we try to have other people to help us."

For the Miners, Miller led the team with 24 points. Pua'auli scored 13 and Shoemaker finished with 10.

"Uma's just a savvy player," Nightengale said. "He's a gamer, he's gonna make those kind of plays. He's smart, he knows the game. He'll guard the best defender. He's just gonna do whatever the team needs to do."

Both teams play on Friday at 7 p.m. Southern travels to Allegany while Mountain Ridge hosts Fort Hill.

"They like to drive kick, they've got several kids that can knock down the 3-pointer," Nightengale said of the Sentinels. "We've gotta contest shots, we've gotta limit them to one shot."

Jordan Kendall is a Sports Writer for the Cumberland Times-News. Follow him on Twitter @JKendallCTN.