MAY – Playing just their ninth game of the season, the May Tigers picked up a crucial District 13-A victory on their home court Tuesday night, upending the Cross Plains Buffaloes, 52-45.
“We play hard every game, but the difference in tonight’s game is we finally played smart and hard,” said May head coach Steve Howard. “We played a whole let better on defense and we shot the ball better. This is just game No. 9 for us, we’re just now coming around. We got two players back this week and hopefully we’ll have one more back in the near future from a football injury. We’re just now getting better.”
Rory Bustamante led the Tigers – who kept pace a game back of league front-runner Eula – with 16 points trailed by Luke McKenzie with 15, Chris Flenniken with nine, Brian Kunkel with six, Chase Martin with four and Kaysen King with two points.
Cross Plains was led by Cody McWilliams with 18 points while Noah Moses also finished in double figures with 10.
May led 15-11 after one quarter and 24-21 at halftime, but began to pull away in the final two frames.
Bustamante tallied eight points in the third period alone as the Tigers’ advantage climbed to 36-27 by the end of the quarter.
In the fourth period, Bustamante, McKenzie and Kunkel each recorded four points as May increased its cushion to 13 points, 44-31 with 4:54 left, before Cross Plains made a late run.
Cross Plains was also plagued by a 5 of 14 effort at the free throw line, while May sank 3 of 7 tries.
“Our biggest strength is our defensive pressure, but we need to improve on our consistency on offense,” Howard said. “We’ll still take a bad shot, but it’s getting better every game we play. Our point guard (Bustamante)s is making better decisions, he’s our quarterback and he’s got to get us where we need to be.”
