In high school basketball games, there are often huge swings in point scores. And that’s exactly what happened in Nativity’s 57-50 Schuylkill League win over Marian on Friday night.

Bryan Ferreira hit a jumper from the key with 20 seconds left in the first period to bring the Colts within two points at 14-12, but then the Green Wave took control with an 11-0 run that started by Sammy Walborn’s basket with five seconds left and ended with Lane Pasker’s driving layup at the 5:30 mark of the second period.

Nativity was successful throughout the eight minutes before the intermission in preventing shot attempts. The Colts managed just three buckets in the session, the last being a driving lay up by Justin De La Cruz with five ticks left.

“For whatever reasons, the second period has been our Achilles’s Heel all year long,“ said Marian coach Scott Murphy.

Marian was faced with a daunting task of trying to come back from a 13-point deficit and also keep state scoring leader – Nativity’s Trey Keating – from reaching his average of 29 points per game.

“We thought we could do a better job attacking their zone in the second half, and we moved Dominic Catrone out to the front to run the offense,” said Murphy.

Murphy’s strategy worked perfectly. Not only did the Colts erase the deficit, a layup by Jacob De La Cruz tied the score at 34, and two more baskets by Rocco Griguoli, who was a physical force under the basket all game long, pushed Marian ahead at 38-34 with 10 seconds remaining in the third period.

The home team played stellar defense, holding the Green Wave to just five points while forcing 13 missed shots, as they looked to keep the momentum going into the final eight minutes of the game.

Unfortunately for Murphy’s team, the could not build upon their lead. Nativity scored the first seven points for a 45-38 advantage. Keating found Noah Dolbin underneath for a layup. Pasker scored twice – once on a layup, and he took a pass from Jake Bowman and knocked in two off the glass.

Marian made one more valiant attempt at a comeback. Down 51-42 with 2:36 left to play, Griguoli scored a three-point play with a driving layup and a free throw, and after Walborn scored for the Green Wave, Jacob De La Cruz’s basket and a putback and free throw by Griguoli put the Colts down by only four at 54-50 with 30 seconds remaining.

But Nativity was able to draw fouls in the final few ticks to claim the victory.

Murphy said his team has been going through “growing pains.”

“We have played a lot of close games that could have gone either way, but we’re very young,” he said. “In the last two years we lost 13 seniors and tonight we started all underclassmen. The good news is that they shrug off losses like this one and come back to play hard in the next game. We like to tell them that basketball is like life. Develop good habits. Do the right thing when nobody is watching and do everything you can to help make somebody’s life better.”

A SUPER SHUTDOWN … Marian’s defense held Keating to just nine points and only one basket, his lowest total for a game this year.

LOTS OF LAYUPS … In the age of three-point shooting, only four baskets came from beyond the arc in the game, and 26 baskets were scored by way of the layup, with nine of them put inside the rim in the fourth period.

ROCCO RULES … Marian was led by Rocco Griguoli who tallied a game high 24 points, all scored inside the paint with layups and putbacks.

NATIVITY

Delbin 7-4-6-18, Walborn 5-0-3-11, Pasker 5-1-4-11, Keating 1-7-10-9, Bowman 2-0-0-6, Kramer 1-0-0-2, Kreiter 0-0-0-0, Grabowski 0-0-0-0, Clarke 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 21-12-20-57.

MARIAN

Griguoli 11-2-4-24, Tirpak 3-1-2-8, Ja. De La Cruz 4-0-0-8, Catrone 2-1-2-5, Ju. De La Cruz 1-0-0-2, Ferreira 1-0-0-2, Nunez 0-1-3-1, Rodino 0-0-0-0. Tom 0-0-0-0, Knock 0-0-0-0. TOTALS: 22-5-11-50.

Nativity 16 16 5 20 - 57

Marian 12 7 19 12 - 50

Three-pointers: Nativity - Bowman 2, Welborn 1. Marian - Tirpak 1.

Records: Marian (7-8); Nativity (8-7)