Dalen Leftbear (23) and Dane Hagler (21) take a breather in between plays. (Photo by Mojo Hill)
DEVILS LAKE — Down 83-82, with 13.8 seconds on the clock, Jeremiah Johnson made his first free throw and missed the second.
The Lumberjacks hustled on their final possession. They got down the floor in a hurry. MarQuez Tyree didn’t get a great look, but he snuck in a layup just before the buzzer sounded.
The Bottineau bench stormed the floor. The cluster of Jacks, sporting their dark green uniforms in a gym full of Royals blue, swarmed through the doorway and out into the hall. The Royals remained standing on the court, looking dumbfounded. The bench argued that there should still be time on the clock and that a technical foul should be assessed to Bottineau.
The referees couldn’t be persuaded. The Jacks rushed back into the gym, sharing laughs amongst themselves. Lake Region State College (8-10, 0-2) had to settle for a crushing loss to Dakota College at Bottineau (14-5, 2-0) at the Devils Lake Sports Center. The final was 85-83 after LRSC led by seven at the half and made a late 6-0 run to tie it.
“I thought it was some of the best basketball we’ve played all year, honestly,” Royals head coach Jared Marshall said. “We just didn’t do it for long enough. … Too many times throughout the game, we don’t do what we’re coached to do, whether that’s defensively or offensively. We just kind of go rogue. And it costs us against good teams like this. We need to eliminate the ‘doing our own thing’ plays.”
The first half was practically a three-point shooting contest. LRSC went 9-for-19 from beyond the arc, while Bottineau went 7-for-16.
After being tied at 13-13, the Royals led for the rest of the half. Their lead was as tight as one point, but they stretched the gap with back-to-back triples by Dane Hagler. They led 45-38 at the half.
“They were really packing it in, getting in those gaps when we were trying to drive. So our dribble-drive was really struggling,” Marshall said. “And I thought we were doing a really nice job of trapping their stuff. And we kind of took them out of what they wanted to do. And we had some really nice rotations where we got steals off of it. So I thought it was a little bit of a chess match in that first half.”
Hagler, a North Star alum, has been starting ever since coming back from a minor injury. A day earlier, he watched his younger brother Hunter win the Ramsey County tournament in the same gym.
Hagler hit four triples in the first half and five overall. The first-year basketball player, who played baseball as a freshman after transferring from Jamestown, scored a college career-high 17 points.
“He’s been great,” Marshall said. “He’s kind of our guy that can do a little bit of everything for us.”
Four Winds alum Dalen Leftbear, a United Tribes Technical College transfer, matched Hagler in the first half with 14 points. He led the Royals overall with 24. It was a career high for him, too, surpassing a 23-point performance he had last year for UTTC.
“That was part of our struggles against Science the other night, is he had a tough night,” Marshall said of Leftbear. “We have tough nights when he has tough nights. And I think he’s not used to taking on a bigger role, and since we’ve had some injuries and guys not around, he’s had to step into more of a scoring role. Coming back from break, I think he was a little hesitant about it, but I think you can kind of see he’s figuring it out. He kind of took the message and made it happen today.”
LRSC is without two of its leading scorers in Alvin Payne, who’s out for the year with an injury, and Quyavant Douglas, who decided not to come back after Christmas break.
The Royals led by as many as 10 in the second half. But, as Hagler slowed down and Leftbear marginally got quieter, LRSC took its foot off the brake a little bit.
The Jacks hit six threes in the second half after seven in the first. Jaden Arzola was particularly hot, totaling eight triples and 27 points.
But they also started making more short-range shots. Elijah Reynolds scored 24 off the bench for them. Tyree — the eventual hero — had 12 points in the second half after only four in the first.
“I’m not trying to take anything away from Bottineau; I thought we had some lapses defensively that led to them getting the looks that they wanted,” Marshall said. “Whether it was in the paint, jumpers, threes — things like that. We just had some blown coverages, and they cost us.”
LRSC hung in for a while. Remy Davis Warrington made a layup to tie it at 60-60.
The Jacks went on a 9-0 run from there. Tyree had a layup and a fadeaway jumper, sandwiched by a Damjan Tapuskovic put-back.
A three by Hagler — his first points of the second half — sparked a little life back into LRSC. Davis Warrington made a triple to cut the deficit to 83-80. Leftbear knocked down two free throws to make it a one-point game.
The Royals were on the cusp of overtime, had Tyree’s heroics not ended the game in emphatic, explosive fashion for Bottineau. LRSC’s effort came up just short.
The Royals will try to keep navigating a world without Payne or Douglas. Their starting lineup looks significantly different than it did even just a few weeks ago, especially with Hagler back.
“Losing two scorers like that has kind of put us into a different atmosphere, and guys trying to do some different things,” Marshall said. “You’ve got Dalen and Dane stepping up, and Jeremiah is certainly stepping up for us, and it’s tough on me just trying to figure out our lineups.”
Akok Ajou, a starter at the beginning of the season, is now coming off the bench. He had 11 points Sunday on four triples. Marshall said he recently came back after taking a knee to the thigh.
“It’s a little bit different,” Marshall said. “I don’t know if the move to the bench is permanent, so we’ll see. And it’s a tough adjustment for anybody. But I’m just hoping we can get him healthy, because we need him down the stretch to make a run.”
LRSC’s next action is at Jamestown JV on Tuesday. The Royals will host United Tribes Technical College on Wednesday, Jan. 21, looking for their first conference win.
