COVINGTON – The Bradford Railroaders used a third 20-11 quarter and an Owen Canan baseline 3-pointer with 0:01.3 on the fourth quarter clock to defeat the Covington BUCCS 54-51 in non-conference basketball action with with the Roaders leading scorer on the bench over the final three quarters.
“We’re not a deep team, we don’t have 10 but the guys that were out there, compete effort, everybody stepped up a little bit when Parker went out,” said Bradford coach, Jay Hall. “We won the game and that’s the most important thing – we just got to get better.”
“Landon Monnin stepped up a lot, Owen Canan and Hudson Hill stepped up – it was a total team effort,” Hall added. “Hudson, Landon (Monnin) on the wing, Landon Wills down low and Tucker (Miller) – we rebounded the ball enough tonight.”
The BUCCS jumped out the a 11-4 lead at 3:10 in the opening period before Bradford’s leading scorer on the season, Parker Davidson went out with an injury at 1:26 trailing 11-5 in the first and would not return to the game.
“They jumped on us pretty early with their intensity level and we didn’t match it,” said Hall. “It took us a little while, staggered us a little bit to wake up.”
Bradford used a 5-2 run to close out first period play trailing the BUCCS 13-10.
Covington stretched its lead to a double digit 25-14 advantage in the opening three minutes of second quarter action only to have the Railroaders battle back to make it a 4-point game at the break with the BUCCS leading 26-22.
“About four minutes to go in the second quarter I felt like we started to get going and do what we do,” Coach Hall stated. “Then halftime hit and always worried when there is a break in the action when you’re on a roll that it’s going to kill your roll and the momentum.”
Bradford caught fire in the third getting its first lead of the night, 27-26 at 6:52 on the third quarter board and extended its lead to 40-31 at the 3:36 mark. Covington cut the Roaders lead 42-37 with the teams heading to the final quarter of play.
The BUCCS got even with Bradford, 51-51 with 0:43 left in the game. With time winding down, Canan drained a Railroaders baseline triple as the buzzer sounded. The officials put 0:01.3 back on the clock and Covington needing to go the distance of the court and a must 3-pointer to send the game to overtime.
With the BUCCA unable to pull it off, Bradford held on for a 3-point comeback win.
“We came out in the second half and it was back and forth, a rivalry for us, kids know the kids, half of them are related, there is a lot of pride on the line and we did enough,” said Hall. “You have to give credit to Covington. They played extremely hard, they executed very well and it’s good to be in situations like this because it does build character. Hopefully we can take it, learn from it and get better.”
Landon Monnin led Bradford and all scorers with a game high 18-points. Britton Miller paced Covington with 16-points.
BOXSCORE:
BRADFORD 54, COVINGTON 51
BRADFORD – L. Monnin18, H. Hill 10, O. Canan 9, L. Wills 9, Z. Harleman 4, T. Miller 4 – 15 9-18 5 54
COVINGTON – B. Miller 16, B. Angle 11, B. Hite 6, C. Humphrey 6, G. Kimmel 5, T. Palsgrove 4, M. Barhorst 3 – TOTALS 11 11-21 6 51
3-POINTERS
Bradford 5 (O. Canan 3, H. Hill 2)
Covington 6 (B. Angle 3, B. Hite 1, G. Kimmel 1, C. Humphrey 1)
SCORE by QUARTERS
10-12-20-12 54 Bradford
13-13-11-14 51 Covington
