Bangor girls sneak past Royall thanks to Nora Tucker’s late three

It came by the narrowest of margins, but the Bangor girls’ basketball team is still unbeaten this year in Scenic Bluffs play.

The Cardinals, who have held steady at No. 2 in Division 5 in the WisSports.net coaches’ poll for six straight weeks, looked to be in serious danger of dropping their first conference contest in just over a year in the same place that last defeat had come.

The lone blemish on Bangor’s 11-1 league record last winter came in a 61-50 loss to Royall on February 5, 2021 in Elroy, and a similar situation appeared to be unfolding Thursday night. Junior guard Nora Tucker made sure that wouldn’t happen.

Tucker splashed a go-ahead 3-pointer in the final seconds to help the Cardinals (21-2 overall, 13-0 Scenic Bluffs) escape with a dramatic 62-61 win over the Panthers (14-7, 9-4) Thursday, February 10 in Elroy.

The first meeting between these two teams back on January 7 in Bangor resulted in a decisive 76-50 win for the home team. There would be no blowout this time around.

The Cardinals got out to a 9-2 lead in the very early going before the score tightened up and would remain that way for the remainder of the half. Royall would eventually hold a 27-25 advantage at halftime and would push that out to 43-35 in the middle stages of the second half.

Bangor responded with a 17-4 run to turn that deficit into a 52-47 lead before the game settled back into a more back-and-forth affair. But after the Cardinals sat ahead 59-53 with a little over four minutes left, the Panthers answered with an 8-0 run to pull ahead 61-59 late.

Royall led 60-59 with just under a minute to go and had a chance to build on it with a couple trips to the free-throw line. However, the Panthers could only convert on 1 of the 4 attempts.

Still trailing by only two, the Cardinals had a chance to tie or take the lead when they got the ball back with under 30 seconds left.

After 20 seconds burned off the clock and the possession not developing into much other than passes around the perimeter against swarming Royall defenders, Bangor head coach Merlin Jones called a timeout with 9.6 seconds remaining. The ball was then inbounded to Tucker, who dished it to senior guard Aliyah Langrehr, who in turn swung it right back to Tucker at the top of the key.

Tucker hoisted up a deep three as Royall senior forward Deyona Jones closed to contest, and the ball caught nothing but net for a 62-61 Bangor lead with 3.5 seconds to go. Following a Royall timeout, a pass up the court was deflected away by Tucker, the clock ran out and the Cardinals had escaped with a gritty road win.

With the outright Scenic Bluffs title already in hand, Bangor will look to end the regular season with a perfect 14-0 conference record when it faces rival Cashton (10-13, 7-6) Tuesday, February 15 at 7 p.m. in Cashton.