Mountain Home squad falls to Bishop Kelly, Kuna

It was a tough week for the Mountain Home Tiger boys basketball team as they dropped conference games to the conference's top two teams.

Bishop Kelly 59

Mountain Home 39

The Tigers ran into a hot-shooting Bishop Kelly team on the road last week and lost to the Knights, 59-39.

The Tigers fell behind early and trailed by 10 after a quarter. They managed to cut the Knights' lead to five, at 21-16, with three minutes left in the half before they went on an eight-point rally to extend the lead with Bishop Kelly still up, 29-18, at halftime.

Then came the disastrous third quarter when Mountain Home missed all 10 of its field goal attempts in the quarter, scoring just four points on free throws compounded by 10 turnovers as the Bishop Kelly Knights stretched their lead to 46-22.

Bishop Kelly continued to pushed the lead to 28 points with six minutes left before Mountain Home caught fire and managed to cut it to 59-39 at the end.

"It wasn't there tonight," said Tigers basketball coach Tony Kerfoot regarding the intensity his team displayed during their loss.

Offensively, the coach felt Brent Sexauer was about the only Tiger posing an offensive threat.

"(Bishop Kelly's) defensive skills were just taking our offense and making us hide it," the coach added. "I didn't think we competed very well at all. Maybe the tough losses over the weekend... took a lot out of us, and we hadn't had time to recover yet. We had to come out and take on number one from the league, and we hadn't recovered."

Brent Sexauer led the Tigers in scoring with 20 points. J.T. Cristobal added eight, Dion Salinas and Luke Filipovich both scored four, Alex Rodriguez added two while Tyler Elliott sank one.

The Tigers shot 31 percent from the field, hitting five of 16 three-pointers while shooting 67 percent from the free throw line.

Bishop Kelly hit 46 percent of its shots, including three of its seven treys. They shot 60 percent from the foul line.

The taller Knights outrebounded Mountain Home, 33-18. Luke Filipovich led the Tigers with six rebounds.

Kuna 57, Mountain Home 41

Mountain Home faced a road-weary Kuna team Saturday afternoon at home in Lloyd Schiller Gymnasium. Kuna was playing its third road game of the week, and the Tigers were able to play with them in the opening half.

But the Kavemen got their shooting eye back in the second half, scoring 40 points to pull away for a 57-41 win.

The Tigers shot out to an 11-6 lead only to see the Kavemen battle back to tie it at 11 after a quarter. Mountain Home built up a 19-11 lead late in the second quarter before the Kavemen started a run that brought Kuna back to within two at half-time.

Kuna continued on to score 10 more points in the third quarter before Mountain Home would score again to make it 27-21. The Kavemen outscored the Tigers, 23-8, in the third quarter to take a 40-27 lead into the fourth.

The Kavemen extended the lead to 20 points in the fourth quarter before the Tigers came back to make it a 57-41 final.

Coach Kerfoot thought they played fairly well in the first half, but failed to build their lead like they needed.

"I thought defensively (the first half) wasn't too bad," the coach said. "We let a couple of offensive rebounds go, and that's when we needed to jump on them, and we didn't do that. They saw they were still in it at halftime and came out fired up and went to work and forgot all about their long week in that third quarter.

The coach credited the talented Kuna squad when they reached their mark in the second half.

"They're going to be tough to beat by anybody," he added.

J.T. Cristobal and Brent Sexauer both scored in double figures while Cristobal put in 12 points and Sexauer sank 11. Michael Daniels added nine points, all in the first half, before he got in foul trouble and played sparingly in the second half before he fouled out. Meanwhile, Ricky Castillo scored seven points while Tony McKenzie put in two.

Mountain Home shot 33 percent from the field, hitting four of 18 three-pointers and sank 73 percent from the free-throw line.

Kuna, which shot a sizzling 67 percent from the field during the second half, finished the game at 57 percent, hitting five of 12 long balls. The team shot 63 percent from the foul line.

The taller Kuna team, which had two players standing six-feet, six inches, dominated the boards at 30-17. Ricky Castillo led Mountain Home with six rebounds while Brent Sexauer brought down five boards.

The Tigers, who dropped to 3-15 on the season, hosted Middleton for Senior Night on Tuesday night and close out their regular season schedule Friday night at Emmett.