The Rosholt Hornets came away with a 61-59 overtime victory against Bowler, Tuesday.
"We won it, it wasn't pretty," Hornets coach Steve Schoofs said. "We flittered the lead away, making fundamental mistakes, inexperienced mistakes.
The Hornets started the game as if it were going to be a blowout, taking a 20-10 lead at the end of the first quarter as Kevin Flick pumped in 11 points. But the Hornets and Flick cooled off in the second and Bowler closed the gap to 31-25 at the half.
The Hornets widened the lead in the third quarter to 48-35, but Bowler came back in the fourth quarter, outscoring Rosholt, 19-6, to tie the game at 54-54.
"We missed some shots, took some bad shots and dribbled the ball too much some times," Schoofs said. "We tried to dribble through double teams. We have some excellent ballhandlers on our team, and they try to do too much sometimes."
In the overtime, the Hornets had trouble from the free-throw line, hitting only three of nine.
The Hornets trailed, 59-58, with time winding down when Bryce Domask took the ball to the basket and scored. He got fouled on the play and made his free throw for the margin of victory.
Randy Printz led the Hornets with 23 points, while Flick, after his hot first quarter, finished with 16.
"Usually, you have to lose to learn a lot," said Schoofs, "but I think we learned from this victory. A loss might have hurt us more because we had the big lead."
The victory improved the Hornets record to 3-6 overall and 3-4 in the conference.