FALLON "The West built a 22-point lead in the third quarter, then held off a furious comeback attempt to score an 80-76 win over the East in the Fallon Optimist All-Star Classic on Tuesday night at Elmo Dericco Gym.
Led by 14 points from Jace Montes of Lovelock and 12 from Brian Bennett of Hug, the West jumped to a 34-20 lead at halftime and built it to a high of 24, 57-33, with 1:46 to play in the third quarter. A pair of 3-pointers by
Hug's Courtney Gardner keyed the West surge.
But then the East began it's comeback. Defensive pressure and some good shooting helped the East outscore the west 37-23 in the fourth quarter. A layup by Salgago with 4:29 to play trimmed the deficit to less than 10 points at 66-58. Reed's Demarshay Vann and Reno's Austin Morgan and Zack Sanford drained 3-pointers, and the East made numerous follow shots as they chipped away at the West's advantage. The pace never slowed on either side.
The East got to within seven three times down the stretch, but everytime they did, the West countered with a basket to stay in front. Three clutch baskets by Montes and one by Manogue's Alex Hargrove in the last four minutes helped the West maintain the lead. Vann hit a 3-pointer with three seconds left to make the final margin four points.
"Typical all-star game," West coach Kyle Penney of Spanish Springs said of the way his team built a big lead only to see its opponent mount a comeback.
"In the big picture that's what you want. We also missed some shots but they pressured and started making some threes they got to the foul line a lot and we didn't, so they were able to exchange some twos for threes and stop the clock when we were fouling."
The West received balanced scoring as Keith Fuetsch of Manogue scored 12 points, Dan Lide of Spanish Springs scored 11 points and hit a pair of treys and Jace Gledhill of Fernley added 10 points.
"The kids are fun to play with," Penney said. "We've got guys that we keyed against in season and now I've got them on my team, so we get to try have a little fun and expand the game a little bit, get to do things outside of the 'coach says do this' type of game."
Vann led the East with 15 points, Morgan tallied 12 and Zach Sanford of Reno added 11 for the East in a valiant but losing effort.
"With these kind of games those guys haven't played in a while so the all takes some funny bounces," East coach Corey Williams of Fallon said.