Siloam Springs moves into first place with win

5A-WEST BOYS

SILOAM SPRINGS 51,

GREENBRIER 47

SILOAM SPRINGS — Siloam Springs has moved to the front of the pack of the crowded and competitive 5A-West Conference.

Siloam Springs gutted out a 51-47 win over Greenbrier on Friday to move to 16-8 overall and 8-2 in league play. Coupled with Greenwood’s win over Harrison on Friday, Siloam Springs is now one game in front of the Goblins (17-8, 7-3) and two in front of Greenbrier (12-12, 6-4), which came into the game one game back.

“Honestly we don’t talk to the team a lot about first place or conference this. We’ll come in the next couple of days and talk about Greenwood [on Tuesday],” said Siloam Springs coach Tim Stewart. “I know I have trouble focusing on one thing at a time, much less 16-year-old boys. We don’t talk anything up about conference race, but they know. At the end of the day we’ve got to keep doing what we’re doing. Defensively tonight we held a really good Greenbrier team — really well coached — to 14 points in a half, and did that without some of our key players.”

Nate Vachon scored 14 of his game-high 22 points in the first half, but his 1-2 scoring punch teammate Dalton Newman had to sit much of the game because of foul trouble.

With Newman on the bench, Greenbrier focused in on Vachon, who didn’t score another field goal but hit 8 of 10 free throws in the second half.

Siloam Springs, which led by as many as 16 points in the first half, watched Greenbrier whittle its lead down to 26-21 in the third quarter before getting the gap back to 10 going into the fourth.

Siloam Springs led by 10 again with 43.8 seconds left in the fourth quarter after Spence corralled a loose ball and scored a layup and Levi Fox and Nathan Hawbaker each hit a pair of free throws.

Greenbrier’s Aidan Berry made it interesting though, banking in a 3-pointer early in the fourth and then hitting three straight treys in the final 36 seconds, including a deep one as the final seconds ticked off.

“He shot the ball well, got us closer,” said Greenbrier coach Mike Simmons. “But I thought when the game started, I thought they had a whole lot more intensity than we did, getting on the floor, rebounding the basketball, loose balls, they set the tone early and got that lead. We had to play catchup the whole night.”

Newman added eight points for Siloam Springs, while Spence had seven and Fox and Hawbaker each had six.

Berry finished with 14 points for Greenbrier, while Jace Dunlap had 11.