Bengals drain 3s to dump Flathead in OT

Who would have thought that?

Helena High came into this past weekend next to last in Class AA in 3-point shooting.

The Bengals were 42 for 170 on the year — just under 25 percent. They only have one player — Josh Herrin — on Class AA’s top 40 list in 3-point field goals.

But they found the range on Saturday afternoon, knocking down seven in a 53-50 overtime victory over host Flathead.

“If you learn lessons from losing, we got a great education this weekend,” said Flathead coach Fred Febach.

The loss drops Flathead (9-8 overall and 5-5 league) into a fourth place tie in Western AA with Helena (8-10, 5-5). Helena Capital is second and Glacier third.

“They’re one of the poorest three-point shooting teams around,” Febach said, shaking his head.

“They were seven of 12 tonight. You’ve got to give them credit, man. They made plays and made shots when they had to,” he said.

One of the field goals sent the game to overtime. Another put Helena ahead for good in the extra period.

Helena’s Tyler Hulse, who led all scorers with 22 points, made the first of those with just under a minute to play to even the score at 44-all.

Herrin made the second.

Flathead’s Karl Ingram had just nailed two free throws to put the Braves up 50-48 with 1:08 left in overtime.

Herrin had a quick answer, though, launching from the top of the key with 53 seconds left.

“Josh hit a nice shot there. He may have been making up for a couple slips on the defensive end,” said Helena coach Willie Schlepp.

“But he felt confident in the shot. He knocked it down. We’re confident they’ll make good decisions at the end of basketball games and he did.

“He just played the game of basketball,” Schlepp said.

“We had some guys step up tonight. I thought it was a good team win. Both teams had guys do some uncharacteristic things, if you will ... some things you don’t often see. There were a couple charges, a couple big plays, couple offensive rebounds ... but down the stretch and at the end we did a nice job of executing,” Schlepp said.

For their part, the Braves will be reliving some missed free throws.

Flathead was very good from the line for the most part — 8-for-12 during regulation and 12-for-18 for the game.

But the free throws the Braves missed in regulation were the front ends of one-and-ones during the final minute — while guarding a 44-41 lead.

“Holy smokes, we drain those, we win it in regulation. And we had another two in overtime late that we missed,” Febach said.

“That’s what you want to do is get to the line, drain free throws and keep them at bay. But we failed to do that,” he added.

“We had chances just like they did. We didn’t convert a couple of free throws late, we turned the ball over. But the effort level was better today. I thought the passion to play was there, we had more fire, we played hard. We just came up short,” he said.

This one was close all the way.

Flathead held a tenuous 27-25 lead at half. Helena was up 35-33 after three quarters.

But Flathead sophomore George Sherwood came alive in the final period, scoring eight of his team-high 16.

“We did a real nice job in the second half of getting some looks inside and scoring the ball,” Febach said.

“George Sherwood stepped up his game today. He was much more active. Karl was his usual steady self (12 points, 10 rebounds). Those guys stepped up big today.”

Flathead had a 44-39 lead with 3:52 to play and was still up three with 2:59 to play.

From there, the Braves tried to stretch the Bengal defense.

“We were just trying to move the ball, make them play defense and look for what we thought would be a wide open shot for ourselves,” Febach explained.

“To be honest, I didn’t want to give them another possession, either,” he added.

“Now, we’ve got to get ready for next week. We’ve got two (games) to go. We need to step on the floor Monday and just work this one out of our system.”

Helena     13     12     10     9     9 — 53

Flathead     13     14     6     11     6 — 50

Helena — Tyler Hulse 6 9-13 22, Zach Hulse 1 0-0 2, Josh Herrin 3 0-0 9, Adam Johnson 4 0-3 8, Graham Bogumill 1 1-2 3, Justin Teegarden 1 0-0 3, Tyler Wiedeman 0 0-1 0, Dylan Simac 2 0-2 6. Totals 18 10-21 53.

Flathead — Tanner Salois 3 4-5 13, Ian Gillespie 1 0-0 3, Karl Ingram 4 4-6 12, George Sherwood 6 4-7 16, Mike VanArendonk 1 0-0 2, Jeremy Grosswiler 2 0-0 4. Totals 17 12-18 50.

3-point goals: Helena 7 (T. Hulse 1, Herrin 3, Simac 2, Teegarden 1), Flathead 4 (Salois 3, Gillespie 1). Total fouls: Helena 18, Flathead 20. Fouled out: Bogumill. Rebounds: Helena 33 (Johnson 7), Flathead 38 (Ingram 10, Grosswiler 8). Turnovers: Helena 9, Flathead 11.