DAYTON - With Dylan Taylor and Tyler Firestone hampered by foul problems throughout the game, Dayton High's offense struggled with consistency.
The Dust Devils walked off the floor trailing Sparks by 15 points, but went on a big third-quarter to take a one-point lead. The Dust Devils couldn't sustain it and dropped a 60-49 decision to the Railroaders Tuesday night in a Northern 3A game.
Dayton returns to action Friday night at Lowry and then visits Truckee on Saturday.
"Foul trouble killed us," Dayton coach Jason Santos said. "We could do very little offensively with the people we had in foul trouble. They played a good zone against us. We had a couple of calls that didn't go our way early."
And, it also didn't help that Adan Gomez still hasn't returned from his Christmas trip to Mexico. Gomez is the Dust Devils' best inside scoring threat and a good offensive rebounder.
Taylor picked up his second foul with 3:03 left in the first and missed the rest of the quarter. He picked up his third with 5:38 left in the half and didn't return. By then Sparks had a 23-10 lead and it was 32-17 at the half, as the partisan Dayton crowd watched in silence.
Xavier Rodriguez had six points, Erik Garcia had six and Brian Morgan had seven for Sparks.
"Our composure was key in the first half," Sparks coach Dan Schreiber said. "We had a lot of patience offensively. It (the foul trouble and the absence of Gomez) hurt them alot. When we scouted them, we felt Gomez was the second threat offeneively.
"The third quarter was uncharacteristic of us. We let them dictate the tempo to us."
Schreiber was referring to Dayton's 18-3 run in the firt 5 1/2 minutes of the second half which enabled the Dust Devils to tie the game at 35.
Taylor had the Dust Dvils' first 10 pints of the quarter. Dayton was down 32-27 when he went out, but a basket and two free throws by Firestone plus buskets by Cody Yeater and Sean deRubertis put the game into a tie with 2:34 left in the quarter.
Firestone gave the Dust Devils their last lead of the game, 41-40, with 6:48 left. A 7-0 Sparks run made it 47-41 Railroaders with 3:07 left. Not long after that, Dayton began fouling on purpose to stop the clock and hopefully get back in the game.
Sparks scored 20 points in the final quarter, 16 of those came from the line. The Railroaders weren't great from the line (16 of 23), but it was good enough.
"I had to start fouling that earlier or he would have run out the clock." Santos said, explaining his startegy. "He runs that offense out top like that. We were down three possessions. If he's up two possesions he'll hold the ball."
Taylor finished with 15 points, while Firestone, who was in foul trouble most of the second half, finished with 14.
