Sports

Engelhard saves Braves’ bacon

By Matthew Semisch

03/03/2015

RUGBY - Bottineau High’s up-and-down experience at the District 11 boys basketball tournament ended the right way up.

In the competition’s first round on Friday in Rugby, fourth-seeded Bottineau fell 82-80 to No. 5 Sawyer. A buzzer-beating two-pointer from Flashes Paul Folden doomed BHS to the loss and forced Bottineau to win a consolation-bracket game on Monday if BHS was to advance to next week’s Region 6 finals in Minot.

The Braves reached their goal on Monday, but they had to do it the hard way. 

BHS had started its region-qualifier game against Towner-Granville-Upham (T-G-U) brightest. After the Titans fought back, though, a Parker Engelhard steal, two-point basket and free throw in the final seconds of the game gave Bottineau a 66-63 victory.

With the win, Bottineau (9-13) move on to next week’s Region 6 showcase at the Minot State University Dome. The Braves will take on Berthold in the first round at 3 p.m. on Monday.

SAWYER STEALS ONE

Bottineau dropped its first game of the District 11 tournament on Friday, and the Braves were unlucky to do so.

BHS started reasonably well against the Flashes and carried a 43-38 lead into the halftime break. The Flashes came out firing after the interval, however, and took a 10-point third-quarter lead before the Braves managed a notable response.

Once BHS did, though, the rest of the second half was a tight affair. So tight, in fact, that a 15-foot jumper from Folden just before the buzzer sounded gave Sawyer an 82-80 win.

“That was a hectic one,” BHS head coach Nate Simpson said after the game. “Sawyer presses and tries to force you into a lot of turnovers, but with that said, we had a lot of opportunities. 

“We came back well after Sawyer went up by 10 points at the start of the third quarter and we got ourselves back into the game, but we gave up too many turnovers and they made a nice play there at the end to win it.

“We shot the ball fairly well and did a lot of good things ourselves, but we didn’t take care of things well enough,” Simpson continued. “Some of that might be nerves, I don’t know, and we played eight kids tonight and a lot of them are in their first district tournament, but we’ll be all right on Monday and be ready to go.”

Engelhard led the Braves with 25 points in the losing effort.
braves advance

The Braves were idle during Saturday’s second-round action due to the uneven number of teams in the tournament. When BHS came back to Rugby on Monday to face T-G-U, however,

Bottineau took advantage of its second chance to move on to Minot.

Engelhard finished the game with a team-high 19 points, including five three-pointers. His biggest basket of the day, though, arrived with 1.9 seconds remaining in regulation and gave Bottineau a 65-63 lead.

He then drilled a subsequent free throw before time and the Braves’ opponents’ season expired.