BERNIE -- Neelyville coach Patrick Morton calmly called it a teachable moment. It helped that the Tigers won.
The biggest lead for either team in the fourth quarter was four points and Neelyville avoided both a crucial mistake and overtime to beat Bloomfield 53-51 in the first round of the Bernie Invitational on Monday.
"They hit some shots and you know they've got some players capable of hitting some big shots, so I was pretty nervous," Morton said about the end of the game.
Tied at 46 with under 3 minutes to play, Curtis Fowler scored for the Tigers (2-0), who tried to start burning the clock on their next possession. Tyler Lowe added a pair of free throws with a minute to play to put Neelyville ahead by four, only to have Bloomfield's Peyton Bell, who finished with 22 points, counter with a quick 3.
"The offensive gameplan was to get the lead and try to keep the ball and make them foul us," Morton said. "It didn't really work out like that but that is what we were going for."
The sixth-seeded Wildcats (0-1) drew a charge, which was also Fowler's fifth foul, but missed a go-ahead 3 with 24 seconds left and Marquise West put in a layup on the runout.
Bloomfield missed a game-tying 3 and fouled, putting Cody McGowen on the line with 5.4 seconds left. He missed the first and made the second, putting the third-seeded Tigers up by four once again.
Dalton Phillips raced up the floor for Bloomfield and launched a 30-footer. He missed but drew a foul in the process, putting the game into doubt with 1.4 seconds on the clock.
"That's a young mistake that a young kid made that I'm sure won't happen again," Morton said. "It is a teaching point, it's early in the season, so we will use it as that."
Phillips, who had 15 points, was clutch and made the first two, then threw a line drive at the rim. The Wildcats came up with the initial rebound, but weren't able to get off a shot at the buzzer.
"I just think we made a couple of big plays at the end, we had a couple of defensive stops, were fortunate enough to get a couple of rebounds and get a couple of shots to fall. I think it was a slugfest and we're happy to come out on top of that," Morton said.
Added Bloomfield coach Brandon Crooks, "We tried to run a few plays late and didn't get a chance to run them at all. They were broken plays and we also turned the ball over a couple times on some of those plays that we tried to run."
Fowler led Neelyville with 14 points and Wyatt Moon added nine. Both were on the bench with five fouls at the end of the game.
"It's early in the season, but probably our two leading scorers go down," Morton said. "I was proud of those other guys for coming in and step up."
While Fowler picked up his final two in the second half of the fourth quarter, Moon was in foul trouble from the start after being called twice for offensive fouls in the opening 2 minutes.
West also finished with four fouls, threatening to completely eliminate Neelyville's three-man bench.
Neither team led by double digits in the back-and-forth game.
The Wildcats were up by as much as six at the start of the second quarter thanks to a 7-1 run that was capped by 3 from Carson Blair, his only points in the game.
Neelyville immediately countered with a 16-2 run that stretched into the third quarter to take its biggest lead of the game, eight points.
Bloomfield, though, sank back-to-back 3s to finish the third quarter and take back the lead.
There were six ties and six lead changes in all.
"I felt like we didn't execute well enough late to come out on the other side of this. I felt like Neelyville executed a little bit better than we did and that played a huge part in the outcome," Crooks siad.
Neelyville will play No. 2 Risco in the semifinals at 7:45 p.m. today. Bloomfield will face No. 7 Campbell in the consolation bracket at 5:15 p.m. today.