Brian Warinner could not withhold his laughter Friday night.

The Bend High junior forward had just scored 10 of this 16 points in the fourth quarter, almost single-handedly keeping the Lava Bears out of Summit’s reach as Bend claimed a 55-45 Intermountain Conference boys basketball road win. To boot, Bend (7-3 IMC, 15-6 overall) pulled within half a game of the Storm (8-3, 12-6) in the IMC standings with one week left in the regular season. Summit’s loss, though, allowed Mountain View, which defeated Ridgeview on Friday, to leapfrog the Storm into first place.

With two games each remaining for Mountain View (8-2 IMC) and Bend and one left for Summit, the gap between the first-place Cougars and third-place Bend is just one game.

This was where Warriner could not contain his excitement, as his Lava Bears created conference chaos as the final stretch looms.

“That’s a lot of fun,” he chuckled.

In a battle of Class 5A top-10 teams, the No. 10 Lava Bears needed a spark midway through the fourth quarter at No. 9 Summit, which had used an 8-0 spurt to grab a 41-38 advantage for its first lead since the first quarter.

The Lava Bears’ spark came in the form of a Brock Mesarich 3-pointer to even things up 41-41, and then Warinner caught fire.

Warinner scored 10 straight points to key a strong finish by the Lava Bears, who closed the game on a 17-4 run for their third win in four games while keeping conference championship hopes alive.

“I was just trying to stay aggressive,” said Warinner, who added 12 rebounds and three blocks. “When (the Storm) are making good runs, we just try to go back at them and not let it affect us.”

Bend withstood a strong Storm surge in the first quarter, using four blocks and a 12-1 run to take an 18-10 lead in the second period. The advantage grew to 29-18 late in the first half, but Summit began slowly chipping away at the Bears’ lead before making a charge early in the fourth quarter.

As part of an 8-0 Summit run, Joe Hicks got a steal and passed ahead to Kincade Mickel for a layup. Hicks then connected on a short jumper on the Storm’s next possession to go up 41-38, but a Mesarich 3-pointer was followed by Warinner’s 10 straight points to help the Lava Bears snag the win.

Mesarich finished with four 3-pointers for 12 points for Bend, and Jimmy Robertson dished out seven assists to go with five points. Eshan Chopra came off the bench to hit 4 of 7 shots for eight points and added five boards.

“He stepped up and hit some big shots,” Bend coach Scott Baker said of Chopra. “He plays aggressively. He’s a hustle kid. He knows his role and accepts his role. He liked the baseline jumper today, and it was awfully nice.”

For the Storm, Hicks totaled 14 points and six rebounds, and Karson Klecker contributed 10 points and eight boards. Jacob Tompkins had nine points and four rebounds, but Summit’s Beau Blea, battling an illness, struggled with his shot, going 2-for-11 from the field.

“He’s our motor and our engine,” said Storm coach Jon Frazier, referring to Blea. “When he’s not able to play at a hundred percent, that just limits some of the stuff we could do. We were in a good spot where we had a lead with about 5½ (minutes) to go; we missed a lay-in and had a couple costly turnovers, and then the game kind of flipped at that point.

“But I thought our kids competed really well. We put ourselves in position to get it, for sure.”

Bend hosts Mountain View on Tuesday and travels to Redmond to close out the league season next Friday, while Summit’s final game of the regular season will be next Friday at Mountain View.

“We split the season into groups, and right now, we’re on season three,” Baker said. “So we need to make sure we compete and do what we can do and see what happens with the rest of it. We asked the kids to, more important than anything, just go and play basketball. And I think we did that today. We had some times when we were thinking, and you could tell because that’s when things didn’t look so sharp. Then we went and just played basketball and did what we could do.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0307, 
glucas@bendbulletin.com