NAYLOR — Some people would call the sixth-seeded Greenville Bears boys basketball team’s 51-47 win over the No. 3 seeded Twin Rivers Royals in the first round of the Ozark Foothills Conference Tournament on Saturday an upset.
Bears coach Jim Jones isn’t one of them.
“I don’t know if you’d call it an upset,” Greenville coach Jim Jones said. “Probably our record puts us as a sixth seed — we had an overtime loss to Neelyville, a five-point loss at Doniphan and Naylor got us (by 16) the other night coming off a long (winter storm) break … and Twin Rivers got us by three (67-64 on Jan. 13).
“So I don’t know if this would be an upset because we’re right there, and the middle of this conference, you could flip it all around and it wouldn’t change. Everybody’s pretty equal in the middle four.”
Greenville (8-12) scored the final 10 points of the third quarter to take the lead after trailing the Royals most of the way, then made it stand up in the final period to punch its ticket to Tuesday’s semifinals
Will Parker’s free throw with 2:50 left in the third period put Twin Rivers ahead 34-27, but the Bears got hot to end the quarter. Mason Womble’s 3-pointer from the top of the key with 2:14 to go in the period cut the Royals’ lead to 34-30, then Womble added a putback wjth 1:40 left in the third to make it a 34-32 game.
Ty Burchard gave Greenville a 35-34 lead on his triple from the corner with 1:08 left in the third period — the Bears’ first lead of the game — then Gavin Reynolds’ layup with 22 seconds to wrapped up the third-period surge for Greenville.
Eli Evans’ free throw with 2:59 to go pushed the Bears’ lead to 43-35, but Twin Rivers (13-8) did not give up, getting a pair of free throws from Parker with 2:21 to go and a layup by Axl Wilkerson 16 seconds later to make it a 45-41 game.
However, the Royals could get no closer the rest of the way.
Burchard led the Bears with 15 points, while Evans added 14 and Ian Meyer finished with six.
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