Great Falls holds off Flathead rally

Flathead fell 56-49 to Great Falls after a late Braves rally came up just short on Saturday.

The Bison utilized a full court press early on to disrupt the Flathead Braves flow on offense and jump out to a 35-19 halftime lead which was ultimately too much for the Braves to fight back from.

"I thought we competed very well in the second half, you can't get down 16 points to Great Falls High with the program Coach Howard has," Braves coach Dirk Johnsrud said.

Great Falls big man Wyatt DeVoss led all scorers with 18, most of his points came in the paint. Noah Cummings paced the Braves scorers with 17 points on the day and Gabe Sims was next up with 13 for Flathead.

The Braves found life in the third quarter by upping the intensity of their own press defense to force multiple steals for easy buckets in transition to cut the deficit to 11 entering the fourth.

Flathead continued to fight and managed to make it a six point ballgame with 1:41 to play in regulation after a Josh Eagleton three pointer brought things to 53-47 but the Bison defense stepped up to close things out.

The Braves are loaded with size in the front court and showed flashes offensively of what that length can do with Cummings and Sims consistently finding ways to score around the basket in the second half. Cummings is 6-foot-6 and Sims is 6-foot-5.

Johnsrud noted that his team needs to do a better job of limiting turnovers and taking care of the basketball.

"We are a young team, we are going to keep working on those and keep building as a team moving forward," he said.

Great Falls — 14 21 10 11 - 56

Flathead — 7 12 15 15 - 49

GREAT FALLS — Wyatt DeVoss 18, Evan Brown 16, Cooper Collins 7, Gaitlin Sutherland 5, Ashton Platt 5, Keaton Struckman 2.

FLATHEAD — Noah Cummings 17, Gabe Sims 13, Josh Eagleton 8, Michael Manning 4, Lyric Ersland 4, Dustyn Franchini-White 2, Slate Burrington 1.