After upsetting heavily favored Lewistown on Tuesday, Tyrone ended up on the other side of an upset Friday night against Bald Eagle. Despite a 34 point outting from senior standout Tyler Mertiff and ten straight points late in the game, the Golden Eagles could not get past Bald Eagle.
\n\u201cI kept telling our guys not to overlook this game,\u201d said Tyrone Head Coach Mike Harris after his team\u2019s one point loss. \u201cWe just couldn\u2019t find any answers, we couldn\u2019t gaurd anybody tonight.\u201d
\nBoth teams came out of the gate slow, with neither team finding the bucket until 2:15 into the game. After Leonard Wilson opened the scoring for Tyrone, Bald Eagle hit two straight shots. Mertiff answered with back-to-back scores of his own, but Bald Eagle responded with a 6-0 run to go up 10-6. Mertiff traded a score with the opposing Eagles, and Tad Chamberlain sank a shot with 17 seconds left in the opening quarter to keep Tyrone within two,
\nBoth offenses picked up the pace in the second quarter, with Bald Eagle\u2019s gaining the advantage. With 6:34 remaining in the half, Bald Eagle\u2019s Mike Surovec drilled a three pointer to put his team up 17-11. Mertiff scored Tyrone\u2019s next six points, but Surovec and Brenton Decker each dropped a shot for Bald Eagle to put the visiting team up by seven. From there each squad scored six before the half, but Bald Eagle was able to keep the momentum by hitting a shot with only six seconds to go.
\nMertiff accounted for 16 of Tyrone\u2019s 23 first half points. \u201cHe had a great performance,\u201d stated Harris on Mertiff\u2019s 34 point outting. \u201cHe can\u2019t carry us. He tried to tonight, but defensively he can\u2019t carry us. He can only gaurd one guy, he can\u2019t gaurd five.\u201d
\nIn the third quarter Tyrone point gaurd Mike Ashcroft got hot, accounting for his team\u2019s first seven points of the second half. Ashcroft\u2019s three pointer with 4:54 left in the quarter was Tyrone\u2019s first successful shot from behind the arc, and narrowed the gap to 6. After a Surovec field goal the Golden Eagles went on a 7-0 run, cutting the deficit to three. Bald Eagle responded with two consecutive baskets, which were matched by four straight points by Mertiff. However, Bald Eagle held fast to their lead and the momentum, when Jarrod Woodring sank a three at the buzzer to keep his team up by 4.
\nThings didn\u2019t get much better for the Golden Eagles early in the final quarter, as Bald Eagle opened up their lead with by outscoring the home team 7-3 in the first three minutes. Mertiff struck back, scoring his team\u2019s next 8 points with a basket and a pair of three pointers. Bald Eagle clung to their dwindling lead by scoring the next five points of the contest.
\nBut with only 1:38 left to play, the Golden Eagles exploded. Dan Domenick hit a field goal, and then got the ball back only five seconds later and was fouled as he shot. The Tyrone junior calmly sank both foul shots to make it a five point game. The Golden Eagles put the pressure on their opponants defensively, with Mertiff coming away with a steal and taking it the other way for a score with 1:10 remaining. A mere three seconds later, Mertiff stole the inbounds pass and was fouled under the hoop. The Tyrone captain stepped to the line and drilled both shots on the one and one, and the Golden Eagles had cut it to one.
\nThe momentum had now shifted completely. After a Bald Eagle player dribbled on the baseline for a turnover, Ashcroft sent the inbounds pass right under the basket to Domenick, who put the Eagles ahead with a short bank shot.
\nBald Eagle wasn\u2019t ready to give it up, however, as Decker nailed a jump shot to regain the lead for his underdog team. Mertiff responded with a jumper of his own, but Decker came right back with another score. Mertiff\u2019s last second shot bounced off the iron, and as players scrambled for the ball time expired.
\n\u201cWe have to move on,\u201d said Harris. We\u2019ve got five games left. We have to put this game behind us. We\u2019ve got Penn Cambria Monday, Bellefonte Friday, and then three games left. We just have to put this behind us and keep working.\u201d
\nThe Golden Eagle jayvees had better luck in their contest with Bald Eagle, posting a 43-28 victory to up their record to 13-2. Kevin Hershberger led all scorers with 13, while Nick Cushion added 11. .
\nBald Eagle Area 65 Tyrone 64
\nScore by Quarters
\nTyrone \t10 13 18 23 – 64
\nBald Eagle\t12 18 15 20 – 65
\nIndividual Scoring
\nTyrone- Mertiff 11 6-6 34, Be. Gummo 0 3-6 3, Ashcroft 2 0-0 7, Domenick 2 4-4 8, Chamberlain 1 1-2 3, Hershberger 0 0-1 0, Wilson 1 2-4 4, Ba. Gummo 1 0-0 2, Cushion 0 0-0 0, Crabtree 0 0-0 0, Hoover 0 0-0 0.
\nBald Eagle- Decker 7 7-8 21, Surovec 4 2-4 13, Houck 3 0-0 6, Ammerman 4 2-4 10, Woodring 1 0-0 3, Rishel 2 2-3 6, Moore 1 0-0 2.
\nThree-point goals: Tyrone- 4 (Mertiff 3, Ashcroft 1); Bald Eagle- 2 (Surovec 1, Woodring 1)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After upsetting heavily favored Lewistown on Tuesday, Tyrone ended up on the other side of an upset Friday night against Bald Eagle. Despite a 34 point outting from senior standout Tyler Mertiff and ten straight points late in the game, the Golden Eagles could not get past Bald Eagle. \u201cI kept telling our guys not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news-in-the-tyrone-pennsylvania-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tyronepa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}