CARTHAGE, Mo. — The Carthage Tigers recorded their 15th win of the season on Thursday night.
The Nevada Tigers definitely made them earn it.
Carthage scored 13 of the final 16 points of the night to secure a hard-fought 66-50 victory over Nevada in a non-conference boys basketball clash.
The hosts were clinging to a six-point cushion with just over three minutes to play when they finished strong with a game-ending 13-3 surge.
“I told our guys in a timeout in the fourth quarter, ‘Not a lot is going our way, but we’re going to grind this one out,'” Carthage coach Nathan Morris said. “We were able to speed them up a little bit and get some turnovers late in the game. We need to build on that finish. We’re going to learn lessons from this game.”
Nevada coach Shaun Gray looked on the bright side after the loss.
“I’m really proud of our effort,” Gray said. “Anyone that watched this game knows the final margin wasn’t anywhere near what type of game it was. It was a two-possession game, and with time winding down we felt like we had to extend our defense. Carthage did a good job of making us pay. Coach Morris has done a great job with them. Carthage is a heck of a ballclub and we knew they’d be hard to beat tonight. I thought we gave ourselves a pretty good chance.”
Receiving votes in the Missouri Basketball Coaches Association’s Class 6 poll, Carthage hiked its record to 15-3.
Carthage had seven wins all of last season. With that, and with more than a month of the season still remaining, the Tigers have already more than doubled last year’s win total.
“That’s something we just talked about,” Morris said. “As ugly as this game was, we can’t be upset. We’ve got 15 wins. These guys know what we went through last year. We’re getting ready for the Tuesday-Friday stretch of the COC. Some teams succeed and some teams fall off. I think this group is up for the test and I think they’re ready to compete.”
Four players scored in double figures for Carthage. Senior guard Joel Pugh led the way with 22 points, while junior guard Max Templeman added 12 points, sophomore guard Justin Ray had 11 and junior forward Tyler Willis contributed 10.
Nevada (4-15) received 15 points from sophomore Brice Budd and 11 from senior Jerimia Collins. Evan Rea added nine points for Nevada, while Cade Beshore had eight.
There were six ties in the first quarter. A trey from Pugh gave the hosts a 17-14 lead, but Nevada received two hoops inside from Collins and the visitors led 18-17 at the end of the opening frame.
Carthage switched from man defense to a 2-3 zone in the second period, and it held the visiting Tigers to just two points in eight minutes.
“They were getting downhill and driving the ball against us in the first quarter,” Morris said. “We went to a zone and our kids did a good job of rebounding the ball when they missed some shots.”
Carthage, which battled early foul trouble, outscored Nevada 11-2 in the game-changing second quarter.
“They did a good job of switching defenses and it took us a while to adjust,” Gray noted. “We got some good looks, but we couldn’t get anything to fall. They kept us off-balance.”
The third period was nearly even, as Carthage outscored Nevada 17-15 for a 45-35 lead.
Hoops from Pugh and Ray gave Carthage a double-digit cushion early in the final frame, but the visiting Tigers simply wouldn’t go away.
Leo Gayman, Jack Cheaney and Budd all had buckets for Nevada, trimming Carthage’s lead to 53-47 with 3:15 left.
That’s when the host Tigers put the game away with one final spurt.
Caden Kabance made two free throws, Willis had two hoops in the paint off nice assists from Ray before Pugh and Willis made free throws to cap a 9-0 run.
Budd knocked down a 3-pointer for Nevada, but Clay Kinder hit two foul shots and the 6-foot Ray threw down a one-handed dunk in transition for a final exclamation point.
Both coaches noted they can take positives away from Thursday’s clash.
“I think early on in the game we allowed Nevada to play much harder than we did,” Morris said. “Really for the whole game they played harder than our guys. I wasn’t happy with how we played early in the game, but I thought we played much harder in the second half.”
“We have absolutely made progress,” Gray said. “We won two of four games last week. We feel like we’re making good strides. We had a rough start to the season. We made improvements over the Christmas break and we feel like we took another step forward in January. We just have to keep on that upward trajectory.”
WHAT’S NEXT?
Carthage hosts Joplin on Tuesday night in COC action. Nevada hosts Monett on Tuesday in Big 8 play.
