The spotlight may have been on Yerkovich and the possibility of his milestone for the night, so Huskies head coach Brad Tingey kept the focus on doing what Hillcrest needed to do: make plays.
"We just talked about needing guys to make plays going into the game. We didn't know where they would come from, we just need them to make plays," said Tingey, "It just came from effort. We worked hard for 32 minutes, we made plays here and there."
The game was even for the most part through the first half, with both teams playing solid defense to end up with Hillcrest having a 20-16 edge at halftime.
The Huskies would balloon that lead out to 12 at one point, capitalizing on uncharacteristic fouls from the Bulldogs. Judge would eventually cut it to three, but after some solid, conservative play form the Huskies, the Judge comeback was to no avail and Yerkovich would have to wait another night.
Hillcrest's Curtis Blackmore scored 13 points, and fellow senior forward Kyle Maughan added 12 points. On top of solid offensive forward play, Hillcrest displayed dominance on the boards, tallying 27 rebounds on the night, and Maughan can single that stat out as being the difference maker.
"Basically, if we forced them to one shot [per possession], they weren't going to score," said Maughan. "Our goal was to hold them to 40 - 10 points a quarter - and they got 45 on us, so we close there and
the biggest part of that was holding them to one shot."
For more from this game online and a photo gallery, go to www.tribpreps.com.
