The Rattlers de-throne the Kings in overtime

Red Deer, October 28 - It came down to the wire and overtime between the Red Deer Polytechnic Kings and the Medicine Hat Rattlers in ACAC basketball action on Friday night.

It was quite a defensive game early on in this game. Very tight defense being playing with no room for either team's offense to run. The Kings would take a 14-13 lead over the Rattlers going into the first timeout of the game. But the Rattlers battled back to a 24-21 lead over the home team before the quarter finished. It was Rattlers Ethan Robinson leading his team with eight points. For the Kings, it was tied between guard Pierce Shybunka and post Jose Mauro with 5 points each. But Mauro was standing out impressively under the net with nine rebounds in that first 10 minutes.

The quarter before the half started out the same as the first with a lot of defense and blocks. But it started to open up with both teams dropping points. MacGregor Manyluk and Kirklan Hall both hitting three-pointers in the matter of seconds of each other. This forced Rattlers Head Coach Richard Humphrey to call a timeout hoping to regather his team and stop the amazing shooting from the Kings. The hometown team would take a slight 40-36 lead to the dressing room at the half over the Rattlers. Robinson would continue to lead his team with 10 points, but Peter Adonri wasn't too far behind with eight. As for the Kings, Mauro would jump over Shybunka for the team lead with 12 and would finish off the half with an impressive 15 rebounds.

But the Rattlers came out of that dressing room with a lot of energy and sparked their team to playing a whole different game then they did in the first 20 minutes. They would double their first half score plus more. The Kings, however, kept it close throughout the second half, staying within a few points of the Rattlers the whole way right until the end of the game.

In the fourth, Shybunka would hit a big three with 23 seconds left in the quarter in which he was fouled on. He would capitalize on the foul shot to make it a four-point play leading to tying the game up at 81. This would lead to a very long last minute of the game with both teams calling a timeout. After the Kings timeout, they would have multiple attempts to tie the game at 83 and did just that with 2.5 seconds left. This led to a Rattlers timeout which means they get possession in the Kings zone. But they couldn't make their way past the Kings defence and at the end of the fourth, it was tied at 83. This means it would go to five minutes of overtime.

All of this momentum on both sides would lead to quite an intense overtime quarter. The Rattlers would take the lead, but the Kings would battle back to tie it. Ultimately, the Rattlers would stay in the lead when the final buzzer went and take the first game of the weekend 90-87.

After finishing the night with 22 points, 12 rebounds and five assists, Rattlers Jordan Biggar was named the player of the game. For the home team, Jose Mauro was awarded this honour with an impressive 22 points and 21 rebounds.

These two teams will battle it out again tomorrow afternoon at 3 pm at the Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre.