FRUITPORT – Jim George once said, “It’s not how you start that’s important, but how well you finish.”
The Fruitport boys basketball team learned that lesson the hard way on Tuesday night in a 61-48 non-conference loss at home to Montague.
The Trojans had an incredible start, jumping out to a 13-0 lead, before being outscored 61-35 over the final 28 minutes.
[1]“They (Montague) slowly worked their way back in,” said Fruitport head coach Steve Erny. “But we didn’t expect to come out and stay ahead by 13-20 points. Montague is a good team. For them to claw back was almost part of the game. They responded and did good things.”
With the loss, Fruitport drops to 1-2 on the season so far, but Erny remains optimistic about his team.
“I like a lot of the shots we got in the game,” the coach said. “Really for us, it was sort of a team issue with body language and energy getting zapped out by their runs. I think a lot of tonight was the going got tough and we had mental fatigue. We’ll just have to keep getting better. I really like this team. I think we’ll continue to grow.”
[2]Part of Erny’s optimism is based on the play of junior big man Ryan Bosch, who finished with 22 points on the night.
“I thought if the defense collapsed, he did a good job of kicking it out,” Erny said about Bosch’s ability to score, or find his teammates when he was double-teamed. “A lot of our good looks that we had were because of him finding teammates.”
After one quarter on Tuesday, the Trojans led 19-14 behind seven points from Bosch and six points from Kyle Burke.
In the second quarter, Montague began to rally, cutting the Trojan lead at halftime to just 29-28.
[3]Bosch had six more points in the second quarter to bring his first half total to 13.
“It really became a game at halftime,” Erny said. “We were just up one. But obviously the second half is where we struggled the most. Them being able to crawl back was really just a credit to them. We have to be better, though.”
The Trojan offense was limited in the third quarter to just eight points as Montague took a 43-37 lead into the final quarter.
A Bosch basket with 7:27 remaining cut the Trojan deficit to 43-39, but Fruitport never got any closer at Montague closed out the game with clutch free throws.
[4]Burke finished with eight points for the Trojans. Montague was led by Isaiah Atchison with 17 points.
Fruitport will next travel to Fremont on Thursday for another non-conference clash.
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