The Bakersfield College men’s basketball team hosted the Thanksgiving Renegades Classic and had two competitive games that came down to crucial possessions.

The Thanksgiving Renegades Classic was on Nov. 25-26.

BC redeemed a loss they had in the last tournament against Allan Hancock by beating them on Nov. 25 with a score of 65-64, thanks in part to good defense at the end and a game-winning shot by starting guard Gerald Bates as the game clock hit zero.

Allan Hancock had taken a 62-56 lead after a three-pointer with 57 seconds left and then coach Rich Hughes called a timeout.

“I think the game changed when coach Hughes called a timeout and told us to give it our all on defense,” said Gerald Bates. After the timeout, BC went on a 9-2 run to come away with the win.

Coach Hughes commented on how the team played.

“It wasn’t a pretty win. We did enough to come away with the win and we played for all 40 minutes. I thought we defended them better than when we played them on Sunday, but I still think we have ways to go defensively,” he said.

“I thought our full court defense was the reason we came back because we got some turnovers and the momentum changed in our favor.”

He added that on the game- winning shot the play wasn’t originally for Bates.

“The play was for Aubrey Ball, but they defended it so Bates just took it himself and made a play.”

Bates said that he knew he would make the shot because he felt that it would go in.

He also commented on the team’s performance.

“We did very good, played hard on defense and had some good offense. We just got to continue to play as a team and work hard on our defense, but we need to start to make our free throws,” he said.

In the championship round, BC played against Porterville and lost by a score of 88-79.

Porterville’s starting guard Jason Carmichael scored 36 points on BC, but even with that the game was close throughout until the last minute when Porterville pulled away thanks to them sinking their free throws and BC’s lack of it.

BC was up 79-76 with a little over two minutes left and then Porterville went on a 12-0 run to finish the game.

BC also missed two crucial free throws when they were only down by two points.

“We did terrible. Our defense as a whole was just terrible. We didn’t defend the ball,” said Hughes.

“Their guys were just blowing right by us and we’re not good enough offensively to give up 80 points.”

Hughes also said that they lost it at the end because they took bad shots, missed their free throws, had some dumb fouls and Porterville made their free throws.

“We’ve got to play harder because they outplayed us and out scrapped us in our own gym,” he said.

“I was just disappointed in our effort.”

Starting freshman guard Aubrey Ball, who scored 18 of his 22 points in the second half, commented on the team’s performance.

“I think personally I did good, but I’m a team guy and I think Coach has a good system so if we listen to what Coach tells us we’ll start to have success,” said Ball. “We just didn’t have the effort consistently and we got to have it throughout the game not just in spurts.”

The team was scheduled to play Porterville again on Nov. 29, and their next game will be on Dec. 10 against Los Angeles Trade-Tech College here at BC.