BILLINGS \u2014 Columbus and Lodge Grass punched their tickets to Friday night’s Southern B boys basketball divisional semifinals by picking up first-round victories inside First Interstate Arena on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Columbus won a thriller over Manhattan, while Lodge Grass handled Shepherd to seal its spot.<\/p>\n
Columbus 42, Manhattan 41<\/p>\n
In a game that resembled more football than basketball at times, the Columbus boys led Manhattan wire-to-wire for a 42-41 victory in the opening round of the Southern B divisional tournament in Billings.<\/p>\n
Ironically enough, the game was decided at the foul line with 8.5 seconds left, as with the game tied at 41-41 Columbus\u2019 Ethan West split a pair of free throws to put the Cougars in front. Manhattan had a chance to win at the horn, but Tyson Pavlik\u2019s heave fell short.<\/p>\n
Columbus led 41-36 late in the fourth quarter, but Blake Bentle tied the game with 22.7 seconds left on a pull-up 3-pointer in transition.<\/p>\n
The Cougars put the clamps down defensively throughout the game, as they forced 19 Manhattan turnovers.<\/p>\n
Cain Hanson led the Cougars with 15 points while Colter Chamberlin added 13. Bentle led Manhattan with a game-high 18 points.<\/p>\n
Columbus will play the Lodge Grass, while Manhattan falls into loser-out action.<\/p>\n
WATCH HIGHLIGHTS OF BOTH FIRST-ROUND GAMES:<\/p>\n
Southern B boys: Columbus survives, Lodge Grass cruises to semi showdown<\/p>\n
Lodge Grass 75, Shepherd 54<\/p>\n
Shepherd threw the first punch, but Lodge Grass finished the fight in the first round of the Southern B divisional tournament in Billings.<\/p>\n
The Indians used an 18-5 run in the first quarter to take a double-digit lead and sprint past Shepherd 75-54, sealing a spot in Friday\u2019s semifinal round.<\/p>\n
Lodge Grass led it by 13 at the break and the lead grew to as large as 26 in the fourth quarter, as the Indians held Shepherd to just 41.2% shooting and forced 16 turnovers. Lodge Grass shot nearly 53% from the floor and nearly 69% from 2-point range.<\/p>\n
TJ Gros Ventre had a game-high 26 points for Lodge Grass. He surpassed the 1,000-point career plateau with a buzzer-beating 3-pointer to close the first quarter.<\/p>\n
The Indians will play Columbus in Friday night’s semifinal round, while Shepherd falls to loser-out play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BILLINGS \u2014 Columbus and Lodge Grass punched their tickets to Friday night’s Southern B boys basketball divisional semifinals…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[64182,64183,64184,64185,75,84,83,64186,59667,9,24,63,64187],"class_list":["post-155056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-mtscores","tag-b-boys-divisional","tag-columbus-cougars","tag-lodge-grass-indians","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-montana-class-b-basketball","tag-montana-high-school-basketball","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-southern-b-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}