Vista Ridge boys basketball surges back to stun Air Academy

US AIR FORCE ACADEMY – Vista Ridge boys basketball coach Joe Hites could only watch as his team fell into a hole early in its game against Air Academy.

The Wolves kept falling and falling and falling.

The freefall stopped with 6:27 left in the second quarter when Tyson Monck sank a free throw to get the Wolves their first point of the night. Before that free throw fell, the Kadets has a 26-point lead.

A gritty battle and a banked 3-pointer from Caleb Kelley with 4.1 seconds left on the clock left fans on both sides stunned for different reasons. Vista Ridge came away with a 45-44 after falling behind 26-0 early. Through the entire course of the run, Hites never called timeout.

It would only waste one because he would only tell his players something they already knew. He trusted them.

“Last year we were down 10-0 against Pine Creek, I don’t call timeout,” Hites said. “We were down 10-0 against Discovery Canyon. I trust these kids, especially on the road. If we were at home, I would’ve called one at about 8-0.”

But they weren’t at home. So he didn’t.

Instead, he let them work out their own issues on the floor.

And there were issues to work out. The Kadets (14-5 overall, 6-2 Pikes Peak Athletic Conference) started the game scorching hot. Finn Horsfall and Gavin Gallegos each knocked down a pair of 3-pointers to pace the team to a 21-0 lead after the first quarter. Gallegos added another 3 early in the second and another made shot from Horsfall pushed it to 26-0.
 

Without knowing it, when Monck’s free throw, the first point of the night for the Wolves (15-4, 6-3), fell through the rim it marked a significant turning point of the night.

From that point on, the Wolves clamped down defensively, allowing Air Academy to score just 18 points the rest of the way. And then Vista Ridge started heating up. Monck hit a couple of 3-pointers and Kelley added one of his own.

Through the third quarter, the Wolves started hitting shot after shot, most of them from long range. The first 2-point field goal of the game for Vista Ridge came from Monck on a baseline jumper with 1:40 left in the third quarter.

“My teammates get me open and get me those opportunities,” Monck said. “I put in the work at practice, but I have guys like Caden (Monson) that want to screen for me and get me open. It makes it a lot easier to score.”

With just under three minutes left, the Wolves had tightened the gab to 40-37. The sides traded baskets and an additional free throw made it 44-42 Air Academy with less than 20 second left.

The Kadets were determined not to let Monck get a shot off, so the ball found the hands of Kelley who fired it toward the hoop. It looked offline but smacked the glass and trickled through the net.

“This morning we had a walkthrough and I bricked it off the side of the backboard,” Kelley said. “It was the same shot. My teammate Xavier (Cisneros) told me at halftime that I had to knock down some shots. They all trust me, and I trust them.”

It was a disheartening loss for the Kadets who had seized every bit of momentum early. Building a big lead seemed to make the boys comfortable and inevitably, the Kadets cooled off and the Wolves started heating up.

“We got a little complacent and (Vista Ridge) was ice cold in the first quarter,” Kadets coach Barry Clark said. “They were shooting the same shots in the fourth quarter that they were in the first. They just didn’t make any in the first.”

Clark insists this will be a good learning experience for his team ahead of the season-ending PPAC tournament that will close out the regular season.