The wrong Bluejays advanced to the District Semifinals Tuesday as the Rock Port Bluejays used seven 3-pointers and a 24-point fourth quarter to beat Northeast Nodaway 68-53 in opening round district action. However, the loss did not look quite so bad after Rock Port's next game, in which they erased a 16-point West Nodaway lead with four minutes left in the game and won 70-69 on a last-second shot.
Generally, Northeast Nodaway has started off fast in its games this year. However, the opposite was true against Rock Port as they fell behind 11-2 just 4 1/2 minutes into the game and could never catch up. The Bluejays had lit up the scoreboard in its last few games, including a 66-59 win over Tarkio in its final regular season game of the year that broke a long losing streak. Before that, they had scored 68 in losing efforts against DeKalb and CFX. But they could not solve Rock Port's man to man defense until it was too late. And Rock Port attacked one of Northeast's achilles heels as they repeatedly attacked the middle successfully in the early going to get some easy layups. After Rock Port's initial run, Tyler Davis kept the Bluejays in the game as he hit a pair of free throws and a 3-pointer from the left wing with 2:18 left that cut it to 11-7.
But Rock Port kept attacking the middle and pushed the lead back up to 21-11 with 5:54 left in the second. Colby Wiederholt broke the run with a free throw and Josh Wideman hit a 3-pointer from the left wing to cut it back to six. Rock Port went through a rare scoring lull, but Northeast could not cut it any closer than six thanks to some unforced errors as well as some traveling calls. The Bluejays trailed 29-20 at the half.
Rock Port extended its pressure in the third quarter, denying the wings and the posts and creating a bunch of bad passes as a result. Consequently, Rock Port took its biggest lead of the game at 38-26 off a D.J. Shallenberger 3-pointer. Rock Port had several different players who could pull the trigger, meaning that Northeast could not key on one. The lead stayed in double digits until Josh Wideman hit a pair of free throws and Colby Wiederholt scored off a fast break with 13 seconds left to cut it to 42-34. But Northeast gave up a drive and a shot from Chase Chamberlin at the buzzer, keeping the Rock Port lead at 10 going into the fourth.
Northeast switched to a 2-3 zone to try to slow Rock Port down, and it worked for the first two minutes of the fourth. But the Bluejays could not take advantage of it on offense as they only points they got were a shot from Tyler Davis. But Zach Murphy hit a pair of free throws and then Spencer Pierpoint stole an errant lob pass to push it right back up to 12. Bryce Farnan hit two free throws and Tyler Davis hit four as Northeast used a 6-1 run to cut it to 49-42 with still plenty of time left. But Treyton Lewis got a putback for Rock Port and then Murphy stole a lazy inbounds pass and converted a 3-point play to provide the dagger that broke Northeast's backs. Murphy would go on to steal another errant inbounds pass to cap a 6-0 run that left Rock Port up 62-46 with just under two minutes left.
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