Sweet Home boys basketball saw a losing streak extend to five games with a 62-51 overtime loss at Estacada last week on Dec. 16.
The Huskies are 1-5 this season.
Sweet Home was up 24-20 at halftime and then 43-34 going into the fourth quarter, before Estacada won the fourth 16-7 to push the game to overtime with the score tied 50-50.
Then the Rangers (3-2, no. 21) dominated in overtime, winning that frame 12-1 on the way to the 62-51 victory.
Junior Nathan Aker had a buzzer beater jump shot attempt for the Huskies around the free throw line at the end of regulation to win the game, but the ball was tipped by an Estacada defender and did not fall.
The Huskies outshot the Rangers 38.0% to 28.8% and outrebounded them 37-32 in the losing effort. But the Huskies turned the ball over 22 times while only forcing 13.
Sweet Home also kept fouling Estacada players, sending the Rangers to the line for a whopping 46 free throw shots. Sweet Home only took 16 free throws.
“That’s probably the most I’ve ever been a part of,” Head Coach Drew Emmert said of Estacada’s 46 looks from the charity stripe.
“On the road you don’t get necessarily the same calls all the time, and that was tough,” he said.
“But I think we kept our composure through that pretty well. In overtime, there were some tough calls against us. They called 11 fouls on us and didn’t call any on them. It was kind of tough.”
The coach said, “We played super good for three and a half quarters and then they made a run at the end of the fourth. Then in overtime we just couldn’t keep them off the free throw line. But it shouldn’t have gotten to overtime, so that was on us.”
He said that for most of the game “We were playing really well on both ends. We were communicating well on defense and we really executed switching our defenses up and confusing them.”
Ultimately, he said, “We just didn’t execute very well down the stretch. We turned the ball over and missed some free throws at the end. And we didn’t rotate as well defensively and kind of had some lapses. We’re still kind of learning how to win and couldn’t quite finish at the end.”
Aker led the team with 20 points on 6-14 shooting, including 3-7 shooting from three-point land.
Senior Von James scored 10 points on 5-10 shooting while pulling down a team-high eight rebounds. Junior Vegas Mauer scored nine points for the Huskies on 3-5 shooting.
This week Sweet Home takes on Sisters (3-4, no. 25) in a home game at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 20.