Flathead tops Whitefish

The Whitefish Bulldogs managed to frustrate Flathead’s leading scorer Karl Ingram for most of the night, but they forgot about Tanner Salois.

The Braves’ smooth-shooting 6-foot-3 senior scored his eighth basket of the night off a breakaway steal with under two minutes to play that seemingly broke the Bulldogs’ backs and halted the comeback attempt.

Salois finished with 17 points, Ingram worked in 12 and Flathead held off a scrappy Whitefish squad 61-55 in a spirited cross-county nonconference boys basketball game at Flathead High on Friday night.

“It turned out to be a very good basketball game for both sides and I feel very good that we got ourselves a win out of it,” Flathead coach Fred Febach said. “Offensively I think what we showed tonight is a couple kids stepped up scoring wise, which is huge. People obviously know Karl Ingram is our leading scorer but we have to have others contribute on the offensive end and that’s starting to show a little bit, which is going to benefit us big time.”

The energy of the game felt like two rivals were squaring off, and the ending had the appropriate excitement until the final minute.

Whitefish battled back in the final quarter and went on a 9-3 run with roughly five minutes to go and cut the deficit to five in front of a raucous crowd.

Just when the Braves looked poised to have a second fourth-quarter nightmare in a row, Salois and Co. snapped out of it.

Ingram willed in a low post basket followed promptly by

two free throws from George Sherwood and the lead was back to nine. Whitefish answered back with a basket by Gage Vasquez, but Ian Gillespie then went 3-for-4 from the line. With the momentum teetering, Salois swooped in and took the steal a la two points that shattered Whitefish’s momentum.

“You gotta hand it to Flathead,” Whitefish coach Mark Casazza said. “They put the pressure on us and we didn’t handle it ... They’re physical. I told the kids before the game, I said ‘They’re big and they’re physical and we’ve got to match that,’ and I thought (Flathead) did a great job of being physical and that hurt us.”

Sherwood finished with nine points and Gillespie added seven.

The Braves improved to 2-3 overall, but more importantly they distanced themselves from their previous game against Great Falls C.M.R. on Jan. 2 when the Braves lost 76-29 and failed to score a point in the final quarter.

“We got hammered pretty good in Great Falls, so we weren’t feeling very good about ourselves after that loss and we felt certainly that we could have played a lot better and more competitive,” Febach said. “So our goal this week was just to compete hard and the kids did that. To Whitefish’s credit, they never backed down. They played hard and they did the things they needed to do to keep in the game.”

Connor Silliker scored a game-high 18 points for the Bulldogs and Vasquez and Mac Roche each scored 11. Roche had three 3-pointers.

Vasquez scored a hard-earned basket while being fouled and added a free throw to give the Bulldogs (2-4 overall, 1-1 league) their first lead of the game, 21-20 with roughly six minutes to go in the second quarter. From there, Ingram scored six straight points and the Braves put together a 10-2 run heading into halftime.

Flathead’s Joe Pistorese chipped in seven points and had a pair of big steals that turned into assists in the fourth quarter.

The Braves host a Western AA league game next Tuesday against Missoula Sentinel at 7:30 p.m. Whitefish hosts Class A Frenchtown tonight at 6.

Whitefish    13    10    13    19    —    55

Flathead    15    15    13    18    —    61

WHITEFISH (1-1, 2-4) — Chris Forrest 1 0-0 2, Mac Roche 4 0-0 11, Austin Green 1 2-2 4, Willie Roche 1 2-4 4, Gage Vasquez 4 3-6 11, Connor Silliker 8 2-5 18, Zach Maassen 2 0-0 5, Cooper Olson 0 0-0 0, Drew Galbraith 0 0-0 0, Kyler Blades 0 0-0 0. Totals 21 9-17 55.

FLATHEAD (0-0, 2-3) — Dean Stimpson 1 0-0 3, Tanner Salois 8 0-0 17, Ian Gillespie 1 5-6 7, Karl Ingram 4 4-6 12, Joe Pistorese 3 1-2 7, George Sherwood 3 2-3 9, Connor Tice 1 0-0 2, Jeremy Grosswiler 2 0-0 4, Mike VanArendonk 0 0-0 0. Totals 23 12-17 61.

3-point goals — Whitefish 4 (M. Roche 3, Maassen), Flathead 3 (Stimpson, Salois, Sherwood); Team fouls — Whitefish 17, Flathead 19. Fouled out — Pistorese, W. Roche