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Montoursville falls to Danville at home

Montoursville's Nate Ripley breaks through Danville's Dyson Harward and Colin Holcombe during the game Friday at Montoursville High School. KAREN VIBERT-KENNEDY/Sun-Gazette

As soon as Brycen Mussina’s putback went through, Montoursville called a quick timeout with 77 seconds remaining in the game. Down by seven points, the Warriors knew they couldn’t let Danville hit a shot on the ensuing possession and had to try to force a turnover.

Once the Ironmen came out of the break, it took just 10 seconds and only a handful of passes down court before Shane Kozick scored from right near the basket to put Danville up by nine.

That all but deflated any momentum Montoursville had built up. After cutting down a 17-point deficit to just seven three times in the fourth quarter, Montoursville simply ran out of time to mount any more of a comeback.

Mussina’s putback at 1:17 was the last Warriors basket as Danville held on for a 60-49 win at Montoursville on Friday night.

“We’ve had other games like that where we got down a little bit, crawl back into it, takes a lot of energy to get back into games like that. Sometimes you burn yourself out getting that close, then it gets away from you again,” Montoursville coach Mike Mussina said. “We just got flat there in second quarter and come out of halftime, just can’t let that happen. They had way too many layups, broke our defense down way too many times. They’re high school kids and some days you don’t play very well. Profes­sionals don’t play their best every single night. They played better than we did, they deserved to win.”

The Warriors (4-6) played solid in the first quarter, scoring 20 points and taking a 4-point lead over the Ironmen (9-3). But it was the second quarter where the Montoursville offense went cold. The Warriors only scored six points in the second quarter as Danville built up an 8-point lead to head into halftime.

“I thought first quarter we played little or no defense and I said we were going down, fortunately we were only down four points. I said if we play a little bit of defense, lets see what could happen and our defense slowly and meth­odically helped our of­fense,” Danville coach Lenny Smith said.

Danville kept up the pressure to begin the third quarter, scoring four quick points in the opening 38 seconds and held Mon­tours­ville to just one point for the first 5:20 of the third quarter before the Warriors offense started clicking again.

“You have to work the ball inside to get the outside stuff and you have to shoot the outside stuff to get the inside stuff. It’s like running and passing in football: you got to have both,” Mussina said. “And Ethan Buirch was doing some nice work inside, just a couple shots weren’t falling. … It got away from us and we just couldn’t find a way to stop them to answer their charge. They made a nice run.”

Noah Fagnano (11 points, seven steals) helped spark that Warriors of­fense in the third quarter, in addition to both Brycen Mussina (21 points) and Buirch (eight points).

Danville led by as many as 17 in the third quarter when Colin Holcombe hit a shot with 3:06 to play to go ahead, 44-27. Danville was led by Kozick’s 25 points. Jordan Bickhart added 11 and Peyton Riley scored 10.

One problem for the Warriors early was rebounding. Montoursville was limited to just 13 total rebounds, only recording three in the first half while Danville had 24 rebounds, including 17 defensive boards.

“We didn’t box out very well, tried a couple different combinations of players and couldn’t really find anything that worked that great. You got to put a body on someone, pretty basic basketball and if you don’t, you’re going to be in trouble,” Mussina said. “Teams that win the rebounding battle win most basketball games. I know we didn’t rebound the ball very well and our half-court offense wasn’t very good either. They played better than we did and they won the game.”

Danville (60)

Coleman Cush 0 0-0 0; Brandon McGaw 1 0-2 2; Shane Kozick 9 7-8 25; Peyton Riley 4 0-0 10; Gavin Geiger 0 0-0 0; Mallet James 0 0-0 0; Jordan Bickhart 3 2-2 11; Colin Holcombe 4 0-2 8; Dyson Harward 1 2-2 4. Totals 22 11-16 60.

Montoursville (49)

Abdi Rodriguez 1 0-0 3; Owen Kiess 1 1-4 4; Brycen Mussina 9 0-1 21; Noah Fagnano 4 3-3 11; Nate Ripley 0 0-0 0; Ethan Buirch 3 2-2 8; Luke Warnecke 1 0-0 2. Totals 15 6-10 49.

Danville    16 18 14 12 — 60

Montoursville    ’20 6 12 11 — 49

3-point goals: Danville 5 (Bickhart 3, Riley 2), Montoursville 5 (Mussina 3, Kiess 1, Rodriguez 1).

JV score: Danville, 48-46.

Records: Danville (9-3), Montoursville (4-6).

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