The Hills-Beaver Creek boys’ basketball team lost a pair of tightly contested games this week.
Playing in front of the home crowd on Friday, Jan. 29, the Patriots lost at the buzzer to Mountain Lake Area 57-55.
MLA 57, H-BC 55
The Patriots took a 24-21 lead into the locker room during their home game against MLA on Friday, Jan. 29.
In the second half, the two teams swapped leads, with neither team able to build a big lead.
With 3:33 left in the game, MLA held a 51-48 lead.
That lead slowly got trimmed to one point with MLA clutching a 52-51 lead with 1:53 left in the game.
A Cole Baker fast-break layup put the Patriots up 54-53 with 38.3 seconds left in the game.
MLA recaptured the lead to take a 55-54 lead with 13.3 seconds left.
Baker split a pair of free throws to tie the game at 55-55 with less than 10 seconds to play.
The two teams looked to be on their way to overtime before a put back layup at the buzzer gave MLA the thrilling 57-55 win.
Baker finished the game with 17 points and three steals.
Zander Wysong scored 16 points and grabbed nine rebounds.
Andrew Harris scored seven points and grabbed a team-leading 11 rebounds.
Ty Bundesen scored two points and grabbed seven rebounds.
The pair of losses drops H-BC to 1-3 overall. All three of their losses have come by eight points or less.
HLOF 79, H-BC 74
H-BC opened the week with a 79-74 road loss to Heron Lake-Okabena-Fulda on Tuesday, Jan. 26. Information from that contest has not been made available.
The Patriots will host Edgerton on Tuesday, Feb. 2, and then hit the road to take on Westbrook-Walnut Grove on Friday, Feb. 5.