Bison bounce Braves

Inch by inch.

The Great Falls Bison (3-0) pulled away ever so slowly from the Flathead Braves on Saturday.

At half, the Bison were up just one point, after three quarters, they’d increased the advantage to four.

But gradually, relentlessly, they did pull away — to a 60-47 nonconference basketball victory over the host Braves (0-1).

The Bison led virtually all the way. Flathead had one lead — 6-4 in the first quarter — and there were early ties at four, six and eight points.

“It was our first game out. They’ve had the advantage of playing a couple of games against AA,” said Flathead coach Fred Febach.

“I thought defensively our effort was very good. But we hit a cold spell there in the second half and that really hurt us because it built their lead up and it was really tough to come back on them,” he said.

“We thought we could press them down a little bit, create some things ... but we’ve got to get some shots to drop,” Febach said.

Flathead Karl Ingram had no trouble in that area in the first half — he had 18 of Flathead’s 22 points.  But Great Falls adjusted defensively in the second half and slowed the 6-foot-3 senior to a four-point effort.

On the night, Ingram was 11 for 15 shooting for 22 points. He also contributed eight rebounds.

“In the second half, I think they did a better job defensively on him. Obviously, he was a little bit tired. There was the fatigue factor to some degree. But to their credit, they did a good job of adjusting,” Febach said.

“And we need some other guys to step up and score a little bit, too,” the coach said.

Sophomore George Sherwood added 12 points, but five of those were in the final 45 seconds with Great Falls in firm control.

Sherwood also had four blocked shots, six rebounds and three assists.

After those two, the scoring dropped dramatically.

Having a couple more games under their belts showed in two other areas — turnovers and free throws. The Bison turned the ball over nine times to 19 for the Braves. They were also 15-for-22 from the free throw line. The Braves only shot 13 free throws — and made just four.

“When you are at home, you’ve got to get to the free throw line and we didn’t do a very good job of that. We did a little too much standing around. Their zone didn’t really pressure us much, but we weren’t really ready to catch and shoot at times,” he added.

“Certainly, there are things we are going to get better at, but I saw some very good things out there,” Febach said.

“I thought our defensive effort was very good, particularly in the first half,” he said.

The Braves will get a few more practices in, then head to Columbia Falls on Thursday for a 6 p.m. matchup with the Class A Wildcats. That’s the first game of a planned doubleheader as the Flathead Bravettes will play the Wildkats at 8 p.m.

“Certainly, they are a very good basketball team. They know their system and they run it very well,” Febach said of the Wildcats.

“We’ll get this one out of the way, we’ll get some practices, make some adjustments and step on the court on Thursday,” he said.

Great Falls     16     7     12     25     —     60

Flathead     12     10     9     15     —     47

Great Falls — Santino Williams 4 4-6 12, Trey Skunkcap 1 0-0 2, Schuyler Watt 4 2-4 10, Mike Winkler 5 4-6 14, Shyke Smalls 2 2-2 16, Lee Perkins 3 0-0 6, Matt Schmitz 2 3-4 8, Trevor Bolton 1 0-0 2. Totals 22 15-22 60.

Flathead — Tanner Salois 0 0-2 0, Karl Ingram 11 0-1 22, Joe Pistorese 2 0-0 5, George Sherwood 4 3-4 12, Mike VanArendonk 1 0-0 3, Connor Tice 0 1-2 1, Jeremy Grosswiler 2 0-2 4. Totals 20 4-13 47.

3-point goals: Great Falls 1 (Schmitz), Flathead 3 (Pistorese, VanArendonk, Sherwood), Total fouls: Great Falls 14, Flathead 18. Fouled out: None.