The Douglas boys' basketball team suffered it's first loss of the season Monday night at the Desert Heat Invitational in Palm Desert, Calif., falling to Thousand Oaks, Calif., 59-56.
Both teams entered the game undefeated, but Thousand Oaks, currently ranked 50th in California by MaxPreps.com, managed to hold off a furious rally from the Tigers to remain perfect on the year.
Douglas trailed by 12 with a little more than 4 minutes left in the game but ramped up its defense and stretched out a run that gave them the opportunity to tie the game on the final shot.
Douglas (7-1 overall) fouled Thousand Oaks with 4.8 seconds left and got the ball back to set up one last play. The Tigers got a clean 3-point look from the corner, but the shot bounced in and out of the rim.
"It was a pretty close game," Douglas coach Corey Thacker said. "We haven't played teams that do things like these guys did. We weren't able to get to the rim like we like to do and they just had great help-side defense.
"We also only got to the free-throw line eight times. They're a very disciplined team. They run their sets well and threw a lot of defenses at us. They are very well coached and very disciplined."
Still, Thacker said he felt his squad could of walked away with the win had they taken better care of the ball.
"We played hard, but it was sloppy," he said. "We had over 25 turnovers. We didn't make good decisions, didn't make good passes. They are a great team, but we played well enough to where if we take better care of the ball and some decent defense, we win the game."
Austin Neddenriep scored 19 points to lead the Tigers. Hunter Myers added 14, Matt Thomas had 12 and Theo Denson had nine.
The game marked both the season low for points scored and season high for points against for the Tigers. It was also the first time this year that Douglas had trailed after the first quarter.
"That's something we talked about coming into this tournament," Thacker said. "We want to get mentally prepared. We have to get tested and we have to learn how to play on the road (Douglas had previously only played one road game on the year) in different environments.
"We're playing five games in four days out here. Every bit of it will be a good test.
"The kids were kind of down. The first loss is tough. We'll see how we can respond."
