Martin scored a huge 63-61 victory Tuesday night over Class B Kelloggsville to run its overall season record to 9-3.
The Clippers once again fell behind early 5-1 but tied it up at 6. Then Kelloggsville went on a 7-2 run and led at the end of the first quarter, 13-8. The visitors added four more to start the second quarter to go up by nine but Martin battled back to get within one at the half, 26-25.
“I thought we were doing a lot of things well, said Coach David Curry, “but the shots just weren’t falling early on. So we told the kids at the half to keep doing what they were doing and things would start going our way.
“Kelloggsville is a very athletic team and shoot well from outside,” Curry said. “That makes it tough to defend them. You kind of have to pick your poison. We did a nice job of getting to help on their drives and closing out quickly when they kicked it to the outside. Then we were able to force them to take shots they weren’t necessarily looking to take.
“In the third, the momentum started to swing our way and we were able to take a two-point lead going into the fourth.”
Kelloggsville then went to a trapping defense and built a five-point lead.
“Our kids did a great job of settling down and handling the pressure, and we were able to get some good looks, capitalized on some odd man breaks and got it to within one with a basket by (Garrett) Dill.”
Kelloggsville missed a shot on its next possession and Martin responded with a three from Tanner Curry to take a two-point lead.
“We were up three late, but Kelloggsville didn’t quit. They got the game to within one and fouled Matt MacVean, who made one of two free throws to put us up two.”
Kelloggsville got it to half court and called a timeout to set up a last second play to try to tie or win. The inbound pass was thrown out of bounds with 1.8 seconds left so all Martin had to do was get the ball inbounds to do that to close out the win.
“I thought we did a better job of boxing out tonight than we had in the past two games,” Curry said. “As a result, we won the battle on the boards by a 36/32 margin. We shot 76% from the free throw line to their 50%, and that proved to be the difference in the game.
“On the down side, our turnovers were back up where we don’t like them to be. Fortunately our free throw percentage made up for some of those.”
Curry led the team in scoring, recording another double-double with 31 points and 14 rebounds. Dill had another stellar outing, finishing with 14 points and eight rebounds. McVean had eight points and seven rebounds. Dill had five assists and freshman starter Carter Hilton had four.
“We will be home on Friday for a division game against Eau Claire. Hopefully, we come out still holding the lead on our side of the league. Our overall record is now 9-3 and we are 5-0 in our division,” Curry said.
