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Late steals help Hayti outlast Twin Rivers
BROSELEY — No double-digit lead was safe Tuesday night.
Hayti erased a 10-point deficit in the second quarter and Twin Rivers dug out of a 17-point hole in the second half.
With the game tied in the final minute, Blaine Pruitt got a steal for Twin Rivers but Hayti’s Trayvon Thomas got it back and had another steal leading to a pair of fastbreak points to beat the Royals 56-50.
“You expect the run,” Hayti coach Travis Day said. “What I like, they made their run, they tied the game, but we didn’t panic.”
Hayti (3-1) had just one first-quarter basket to fall behind by 10, but scored 22 unanswered points to turn the tide.
Twin Rivers (4-2) managed just one field goal in the second quarter and trailed 19-15 at the half. The Royals were down 42-25 with 1:38 left in the third quarter but pulled even just under 3 minutes to play.
“They’re just good kids with good character and they didn’t want to quit,” Twin Rivers coach Seth McBroom said of the comeback.
Thomas led Hayti with 23 points and seven steals. Tyler Moore added 15 points while Jah-Tavion Patterson had seven points.
Brandon Tompkins scored 19 points and had seven rebounds while Jolby Jones added 11 points for the Royals. Avery Jackson chipped in eight points and Will Moore added six.
Hayti led 43-34 to start the fourth quarter but the Royals pulled even at 48-all when Tompkins scored in the post off a pass from Colton Hargraves with just under 3 minutes to play.
Patterson’s offensive rebound led to a foul shot and Hayti later got another free throw before missing a pair at the line with 1:25 to play.
Jackson found a wide-open Hargraves under the basket to tie it at 50-all with 71 seconds left. Pruitt then got a steal near midcourt and the Royals were looking to take the lead for the first time since late in the first half.
However, Thomas picked up a steal leading to a layin by Moore. Thomas got another steal and scored himself 10 seconds later to put Hayti ahead by four.
“We know that last minute didn’t go the way we wanted, but that doesn’t define what they’ve done for us here,” McBroom said.
Hayti didn’t score over the opening 5 minutes, 25 seconds.
But the Royals went 8 1/2 minutes without a field goal as Hayti turned a 10-point deficit into a 30-16 lead.
Tompkins got a three-point play with 4:41 left in the half to put the Royals up 15-5. The next field goal for Twin Rivers didn’t come until the 5:05 mark of the third when Jones dropped in a 3-pointer, the first of his eight points in the quarter.
“We just blew the second quarter,” McBroom said. “I don’t know what we were doing. We stopped going inside the second quarter and it just killed our flow.
“Of course Trayvon got going in the second quarter a little bit.”
Thomas scored 13 of his points in the second. Moore scored nine in the third, jump-starting a 10-2 run with a 3-pointer. A steal and layin by Thomas ended the run with Hayti up 42-25 with 1:50 left in the third.
Hayti struggled in the halfcourt against a 2-3 zone but was able to score 20 points off 25 turnovers by Twin Rivers.
“We got to get better at finishing what we started,” Day said.
Hayti picked up the No. 6 seed for the Bloomfield Christmas Tournament while Twin Rivers is seeded eighth on the opposite side of the bracket.
The Royals were coming off a home win over Puxico the previous night and will host Van Buren on Thursday. Pruitt, Jones, Moore, Tompkins and Jackson were honored before the game for Senior Night.
“Great group of guys,” McBroom said of his seniors. “Love every one of them. Really stand-up, character guys.”
