Colts surrender late lead, season ends

opening round of the 3A Region 2 Tournament Thursday. However, they couldn’t land the knockout blow and fell, 57-53.

Rivercrest (15-12) led 46-36 at the end of three quarters as freshman Christian Nunn stole the basketball, converted it to points and drew the foul. He sank the free throw to set the third quarter score.

The Colts built the lead behind a defense which really bothered the Panthers (34-3) and created numerous turnovers. And it was done despite giving up a significant height advantage in the paint where Bergman starts 6-9 Hayden Jones and 6-7 Sawyer Schubert. Jones didn’t crack the scoring column but proved to be a dynamic rim protector blocking double-digit shots in the paint.

The fourth quarter though proved disastrous for the 3A-3 third seed as they committed unforced errors and couldn’t sink their free throws in crunch time.

The Colts missed 5-of-12 from the line in the final period as it clung to a lead. All in all, they missed 11 of their 27 attempts.

Jayden Young led Rivercrest with a game-high 30 points, while Buddah Harris contributed 10 points.

Rivercrest was sitting at 13-5 on Jan. 24 and held second place in 3A-3.

Then injury and illness set in as Young missed games and senior starter Cavonta Washington missed the postseason while tending to a leg injury.

From that point, the Colts lost seven of their last nine games with four of those losses coming by margins of four points or less.

The team also fails to make the state tournament for only the second time since 2017.

Dylan Friend led Bergman with 20 points and Schubert added 18.