Buffalo JV edges in thriller, as Varsity fades after halftime tie

At home on Saturday night, January 27, the Buffalos hosted the Piute Thunder­birds, in which the JV’s prevailed in a cliff-hanging flurry of directly under-the-basket go-ahead team tries until Hogan Har­ris cleanly netted the winner as time was expiring: 41-40!

Senior Johnny Cox, (6’-3”,) breaks down the team’s outlook closing-in on the postseason. The team’s doing actually pretty good, I think. We’re working on defense right now. It’s looking a little bit lazy. My last game, we did a pretty decent job most of the game on defense. Our offense just wasn’t there; and so, we couldn’t come out on top. But, overall, we’re working for perfection; we’re getting there.” Photo by Jerry Melrose.

In the hair raiser, Ho­gan was high-pointer with 11 from four deuc­es, one triple, written as [4-2]. Cousin Pay­son Harris followed with nine treys [0-3], Keenan Chamberlain contributed eight [1-2], brother Holden Har­ris had six [3-0], Ivan Spencer a three [0-1], while Conner Smith paired.

Coach Jake Mil­lard, pleased with the results proclaimed, “Yeah, it was a really fun game: one-point victory! And it was kind of a very similar story, too, over at their place, where we got down, but were able to come back, and won by one-point over there, also. So, one-point tonight, plus our Sophomore Tourna­ment victory. That’s 3-0 against Piute this year for our JV team, which feels really good!

“It was an exciting finish. Some big buck­ets made from good shots. Keenan made a three; Hogan made a nice little floater. And some hustle plays that really sealed the deal for the guys. It was an exciting finish.”

The hometown Var­sity led, 14-7, into the second quarter before the visitors matched them settling into the half knotted at 21-apiece. As fortune would have it, the T-birds thundered into the third frame, 20-8, and a 15-12 finale: 56-41.

Johnny Cox scored 15 via six deuces, no threes, and of a trio of free throw attempts, making them all [6-0- 3-3]. Jace Cox jacked-in nine [3-1-2-0], Boede Cox, seven [0-2-2-1], Warren Spencer added five [2-0-2-1], as did Holden [1-1-0-0].

“I felt pretty good about the first half,” noted Head Coach Owen Hoyt in sum­mary. “I thought our defense was solid: held them to 21 points in the first half. But, where we got wrong is in the third quarter. We just turned the ball over too much. Our defense didn’t have a chance to set-up when we turned the ball over. Piute’s extremely good at turning turnovers into transition points. And so, I think we ended-up with 15 turn­overs. And I’ll betcha’ they scored almost every one of those.

“Otherwise, I was pretty happy with our defense. But, the offense, I think, let us down. We’ve been working really hard on defense and trying to take and make pos­sessions difficult for other teams to score on us. And I thought we did really well out­side of the turnovers. So, we’re working on turnovers this week with offense and try­ing to make sure we take care of the ball. We’ve got Panguitch on Wednesday, January 31. That’ll be a tough matchup to us, and we hope to go over there and play a good game.”

On Saturday, Valley will play host to Telos Academy, a private school in Orem, Utah. Then on Thursday, February 8, Wayne will arrive on campus.