Bradford High head coach Dave Fuhrman and the Owls do not
believe in moral victories.

Said Fuhrman of the Owls’ 60-54 overtime defeat at the hands of
a resilient Hollidaysburg team on Saturday, “A loss is a loss.”

Never mind that the Golden Tigers compete at the Class AAAA
level and never mind that the BHS boys team is the youngest it has
been in some time.

“I don’t look at it like that,” Fuhrman said of the Golden
Tigers’ large school designation. “Basketball is basketball and we
will not use youth and inexperience as an excuse.

“We’ve got three guys out there that have played a lot of
varsity basketball. We should be winning these games.”

It looked for all the world like a potential win for the hosts
as the Owls took an 18-point lead, 32-14, on a Shane Hvizdzak
basket with 1:24 left in the first half.

Junior guard Tommy Morris was at the crux of Bradford’s fast
start, scoring 18 first-half points on the strength of four
three-pointers.

“He got off to a good start,” Fuhrman remarked. “He shot it well
from the perimeter and that’s why we had the lead. The threes are
nice but they can be fool’s gold. Our perimeter shots weren’t
falling in the second half.”

The first hint of a Tiger rally appeared when Philip Pope buried
two threes in that last minute before intermission, shaving the
visitors’ deficit to 12, 32-20.

“I knew the game was not over at halftime even though we were up
by 12,” Fuhrman recalled. “They are a good team and the game is 32
minutes long.”

Solid play from Ben Walter, Ben Lanich and Hvizdzak kept
Bradford’s lead at 10 points with 2:30 left in the third.

However, just one minute later, the Tigers’ John Boyer made a
three-point play and Andy Dellaripa scored for a 40-35 score.

Free throws by Morris pushed it back to seven, with 1:00
showing.

Jared Colmer then took the ball coast to coast for the lay-up as
the buzzer sounded on the third.

“We make those two free throws and then allow the guy (Colmer)
to dribble the length of the floor and lay it in at the buzzer,”
Fuhrman grumbled. “It’s just unbelievable the things we allow
defensively.

“If we don’t let him go the length of the floor, we win by two
if things play out the way they did (to the end of
regulation).”

As it were, the Tigers completed their storm back into the game
as Boyer, who finished with a team-high 21 points, engineered a 9-0
burst to give his team the lead at 46-45 with 4:39 left.

It was two foul shots by the sophomore Lanich and an Arnett
block on Boyer that forced the overtime.

Those extra four minutes proved useless to the hosts as
Hollidaysburg went 6-for-6 at the charity stripe to seal the 60-54
triumph.

“We’ve lost back-to-back games in overtime and you’d hope you
would start learning from those mistakes, but we don’t seem to,”
Fuhrman lamented. “We took ill-advised shots in the fourth, stood
around and did not execute.

“It was another tough loss. We played well in the first half and
you wonder why we can’t do it more consistently.”

Morris finished with a game-high 23 points on five trifectas and
Hvizdzak recorded another double-figure performance with 12 points
to lead BHS.

The Owls are now 1-3 on the season and will open District 9
League play Tuesday (7:30 p.m.) when the Crusaders of Elk County
Catholic visit the Owls’ Nest.

“Elk has had a few blowout wins and we’ve been in a lot of close
games, so I’m hoping that benefits us,” Fuhrman reasoned. “I know
Elk is going to come up here and play us tough. We’ll see how we
respond.”