BILLINGS — AJ Moser felt the Billings West boys basketball team lost its way earlier this week. Coach Kelly Darragh said as much as well.
The Bears felt a little better about themselves Friday night following a 70-60 road win over Billings Senior. It was a bounce-back victory from Tuesday, when West, which sat atop the 406mtsports.com Class AA rankings, suffered a 20-point home loss to Billings Skyview.
In that loss, the Bears had no match for the Falcons' energy level, and Skyview took full advantage.
Friday, though, from Cooper Tyson’s game-opening dunk to his second slam with just over two minutes left in the game — on a breakaway, Tyson hammered the ball off the court just inside the free-throw line and rose in the air to flush it through the hoop on basically a pass to himself — the Bears appeared to again be playing with a purpose.
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“I mean, just have fun,” said Moser, one of five Bears to score in double figures against the Broncs. “You could see it in our eyes last game, we just weren’t doing the things we used to do earlier in the season. We got back to that tonight, I think.”
That’s not to say the game was easy or that the Broncs went quietly into the night. Though the Broncs trailed the entire way after leading 4-2, they also ate into an 11-point deficit to get within 44-42 in the third quarter and 50-49 and 52-51 in the fourth.
Enter Moser, who hit two corner 3s as part of a personal 8-0 run — another bucket from Mitchell Fogelson made it a 10-0 Bears’ surge — to get the cushion back up to 11 points with 2:45 to play.
Moments later Tyson was flying through the air to pretty much seal the Broncs’ fate.
“We got a win in a tough gym,” Darragh said. “(The Broncs) are well-coached, they play hard … but we answered tonight. We didn’t really answer the other night and this night we did.”
Billings West's Billy Carlson tries to get to the basket against Billings Senior's Jaiden Turner during Friday's game at the Senior gym.
Billy Carlson scored 18 points to lead the Bears, who improved to 14-3 and 10-3 in the Eastern AA. He was followed by Moser (14 points on four 3-pointers), Fogelson (13 points), Tyson (11 points) and Teagan Balfanz (10).
Senior was led by Brighton McCaffrey’s 18 points. Jaiden Turner added 14 points and Mackey Burckley had 13, though it wasn’t enough to prevent the Broncs from dropping to 5-11 overall and 5-7 in the Eastern AA. With two games remaining in their regular season, the Broncs appear headed for a fourth through sixth seed for the upcoming Eastern AA Divisional.
“I’m just super proud of these guys, their effort, everything we talked about they did it,” Senior coach Drew Haws said. “Ultimately, West just hit more shots than we did in the first half. We did crawl back and got within 52-51 at one point and that’s all we can ask for … give ourselves a chance.”
Billings Senior's Brighton McCaffrey drives towards the basket against Mitchell Fogelson of Billings West Friday at the Senior gym.
The Bears, who sit in second in the league standings behind Bozeman, played their second game in a row without point guard Ben Erbacher (shoulder), the team’s leader in assists (3.53 per game) and perhaps its toughest defender.
West is still adjusting to Erbacher’s absence, and Darragh praised the play of freshman Cash Rice, who provided quality minutes in seeing his first varsity action of the season.
Ultimately, though, West’s success mostly comes down to the team playing with its joy for basketball. That might have been missing briefly, but the Bears feel its back.
“I think we’re a really good team, I think we lost sight of that last Tuesday,” Moser said. “I think we worked to get back there tonight and I’m pretty proud of that. So we’re just going to keep trying and keep playing good basketball.”