Early on Tuesday night, it seemed like the Fluvanna boys basketball team was going to net themselves a comfortable victory against Monticello. Those thoughts evaporated before the fourth quarter and in the fourth, the Mustangs rallied to cut the Fluvanna lead to three points with less than a minute to play.
The Flucos managed to hang on though, surviving the Mustangs’ comeback attempt to pick up a 66-61 victory.
That early feeling that the Flucos were headed for an easy win materialized when they scored 21 points in the first quarter, most of them coming from the perimeter as they rang up five three-pointers. John Rittenhouse caught fire right out of the gate, scoring his team’s first 11 points, starting the scoring with an off-balance, banked-in three from the top of the key.
“The shots were falling, we started off hot, and then it was like somebody put a lid on the basket — it would rim out every time” said Rittenhouse, who led Fluvanna with 23 points. “But soon they started falling again.”
That cold stretch came in the second quarter, where it seemed like neither team could buy a bucket. But the Flucos stayed strong on defense, and secured a double-digit point lead going to the halftime break.
Then in the third quarter the threes started falling again for the Flucos, with Maurice D’Alessandro knocking down a pair of them, part of his 17 points that he scored in the game. Kobe Edmonds also had a standout performance with 14 points.
But then, the Mustangs began to claw their way back into things, pressuring the Flucos and creating havoc defensively. Their pressure forced the Flucos into multiple turnovers, creating easy buckets in the transition game and fighting to make it a three-point game inside of a minute left in the game.
Dylan Scheel, who recently returned to the lineup for the Mustangs, played a huge role in that press and found success driving the ball into the paint and getting to the line, finishing with 19 points. Meanwhile, Stefan Matthews got things going down low, and ended the game leading the Mustangs with 21 points.
The Flucos were rattled by the pressure from the Mustangs, and were forced to call a timeout with 46 seconds left while holding onto a three-point lead.
“We needed to stop turning the ball over, we were trying to run a delay game just to run the clock out but that didn’t work too well, at that point they were trying to foul us and we were trying to get the ball in people that could make free throws hands,” said Rittenhouse. “It was an ugly one at the end right there but we were able to pull that one out.”
And with 2.7 seconds left, it was two foul shots by Rittenhouse that sealed the game for the Flucos, and capped off a fantastic performance at the foul line for them as they shot 18-for-19 from there.
The Flucos hit the road for a huge matchup with Albemarle Wednesday night, while the Mustangs host Western Friday.
