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Three Forks upends Vigilantes

The Three Forks High School boys basketball team bounced back from their first loss of the year in impressive fashion with a 72-42 home win over Class A East Helena.

After falling the previous night 65-42 at Manhattan Christian, the Wolves had a huge second quarter outscoring the Vigilantes 26-6 to take a 34-12 lead at the half.

Head Coach Terry Hauser said it felt good to get back on the floor after the tough game Friday.

“I was so proud of the kids with the effort they played with and more importantly their focus and attention to detail,” said Hauser. “We try and do three things every night which are play hard, play smart and play together. We did a much better job of that on Saturday night.”

Three Forks was led in scoring by Owen Long with 23. Mikey O'Dell finished with 12, and Finn Tesoro was also in double figures with 10. Jacob Buchignani finished with nine, Shane Williams had seven, Austin Allen had four, Dylan Swenson added three, and Caleb VanVleet had two points.

Long led the team in scoring against Manhattan Christian with 14, and O'Dell was also in double figures with 10. Buchignani finished with five, Williams had four, and Allen added two points.

Hauser said his team had a very poor effective field goal percentage against the Eagles, and that was due to bad shot selections a majority of the night.

We played defense probably 70% of the game because they made us work on the defensive end. We struggled stopping Christian’s penetration, they got a piece of the paint on almost every single offensive possession they had. Saturday, we played a very unselfish game on the offensive and defensive end,” Hauser said.

Three Forks will host Big Timber Friday and will be on the road Saturday in Columbus.

Looking towards this week’s game, Hauser said when they don't have anything in transition, they need to have at least 15 -20 second possessions. We will work on that in practice. We also need to play better on ball defense and stop penetration. Big Timber and Columbus will run the dribble drive offense and if we let them get in the paint like we did Friday night it could be another long night at Columbus,” he said.