| Cameron Oliver blocks a shot against Tooele in a game earlier in the season. |
On Friday night the world watched the countdown to 2005 as a ball dropped in Times Square.
The night before in the Dinogym in Price, the crowd also watched a ball drop as a game clock ticked down, but it missed the mark and the contest went into overtime. That was good luck for the Dino’s who had missed a number of chances at the foul line to win the game at the end while Ogden had hit theirs.
With new life on a day before New Years, Carbon players and coaches were ecstatic. Unfortunately the luck that got them to the point of tying the game poured out onto the floor in the next five minutes, just like a tipped over champagne glass as the Ogden team lit up the scoreboard and outscored Carbon by nine in the overtime period and took the game 87-78.
If the end of this game was ominous, so was the beginning.
Carbon got off to a fairly slow start and Ogden jumped all over them leading 13-7 in the middle of the first quarter. But Carbon somehow found the juice and began to score and stop the Tigers as well. The quarter score ended up being Carbon 19, Ogden 15.
But the Tigers must have just waited to install their defense until the second quarter. The high flying Dinos suddenly couldn’t find the mark and Ogden began to catch up. By the end of the quarter Carbon led by the slimmest of margins 31-30.
The third and fourth periods were a marathon of players going to the line. Carbon did well at first, but toward the end of the fourth period they were at the line a number of times and came up dry as the went to the free throw well.
“These free throws are important,” Carbon coach Ted Bianco yelled at his team as they missed another. That encouragement did bring a couple of points from the charity stripe on the next trip down, but it was too little to late to put the game out of reach of the Tigers.
But what really did the Carbon team in was their defense against the three point bomb. Ogden had nine in the game including three in the overtime to bury the Dinos.
The biggest damage came from Tiger junior Zachery Preston who threw in seven three pointers on his way to 31 points.
Carbon was led in scoring by Schyler Namanny with 19, with Cameron Oliver close behind with 17 points. Tyler Nelson scored 11 and Parker Parsons added 10.
With the win Ogden evened their overall record to 5-5, while Carbon moved to 3-8.
The Dinos now face two Colorado teams at home this weekend with a game against Central High School of Grand Junction on Friday night and with Grand Junction High on Saturday. The game on Saturday will take place at 1:30 p.m.
Their first Region 8 league game will be against Emery at home on Jan. 12.