Knights, Moose battle in overtime

The Palmer Moose boys' basketball team hosted the Colony Knights Friday in a battle of two rival teams relenting nothing until the final buzzer sounded in overtime.

With the Knights continually charging to erase deficits and force overtime with a 59-59 tie at the end of regulation, the Moose rode outstanding free-throw shooting in the extra stanza for a 70-67 victory before a near-capacity crowd Palmer High School.

"It was not the type of win we wanted, but we'll take it," said Palmer coach Brandon Blake. "We knew that a tough rival like Colony was not going to quit."

The game started with a fast pace, with both teams moving up the court and wasting no time putting the ball at the basket.

Colony took a 13-6 lead deep into the first quarter, but Palmer shot back to take a 14-13 lead by the end of the quarter with three-pointers from Zach Pettit and Alex Hill.

The Moose took off with a 21-point second quarter by crashing the boards for rebounds on both ends of the court and draining outside shots.

Zac Forsyth's nine points and Adam Nielson's eight in the second quarter paced the Moose to a 35-19 lead at halftime.

Palmer shooting chilled in the third quarter while the Knights caught fire. Colony charged with 22 points in the quarter from the hot shooting of Landon Swank and Clay Hotchkiss to close the gap to 47-41 by the end of the third quarter.

"We thought we might have them going into the third quarter, but we let them back in the game," said Blake. "We seem to do this a lot this year. The third quarter seems to be our nemesis."

Colony and Palmer battled through a fourth quarter with the Moose maintaining the six-point advantage at 55-49 with two minutes, 30 seconds remaining in the game.

A three-pointer by Hotchkiss surged the Knights to within three points of the Moose. Swank drained five-straight free throws in the closing seconds to eventually tie the game at 59-59 with 4.8 seconds remaining.

A Palmer inbound and half-court shot attempt missed, but Charlie Bentti put the errant shot back up as the buzzer sounded. The basket, however, was waved off by officials who contended that the follow-up shot came after the buzzer.

After 32 minutes of play, nothing was decided. The teams headed for overtime to decide the winner of a tremendous contest that featured great momentum swings throughout.

As would be expected of a game with this much drama, the five-minute overtime did not disappoint.

With each team slowing the pace to move the ball around and find open shooters, the Knights struck first when Swank came open on the wing and drained a three-pointer to give Colony its first lead since the first quarter.

Palmer remained patient with a ball-control offense as the aggressive Knight defense began to pick up fouls from their tight man-to-man coverage.

Despite another Colony three-pointer from Swank and a two-point basket by Justin Coffman, Palmer continued to go to the free-throw line and gain points one at a time for a 70-67 lead.

Colony had one shot left with an inbound pass from under the Palmer basket with 1.4 seconds remaining in overtime.

The inbound pass came to Joe Reza just past the half-court line, but he couldn't get the shot off in time as the Moose took the victory.

Palmer scored all of its 11 overtime points from the free-throw line, with Hill hitting eight-of-eight in the overtime.

"I felt confident at the line, but was a little shaky about the last two free throws," said Hill. "I was afraid I might miss the last two then they would come down and score."

Both teams shot well from the free-throw line in the game, with Palmer hitting on 25 of 31 free throws and Colony 15 of 18.

"This was a great booster for us," added Hill. "Palmer and Colony are great rivals; we both knew that neither team would give up."

The Moose were able to pull out the victory without the play of Forsyth and Nielson in overtime. Both players fouled out of the game before the end of regulation.

"Our young guys really kicked in to replace those guys in overtime," said Blake. "Alex contributed big for us."