Some of that was inexperience, some, bad luck. A lot was good teams finding a win to nip the Vikings, such as the Blue Streaks had done earlier in a two-point win at North Canton.

Hoover senior Tyler Veldhuizen and the Vikings never quit believing, never stopped hustling, though. It paid off in the team’s biggest win to date when Veldhuizen grabbed Tyler Maciag’s 3-point miss and put it in at the buzzer for a 42-40 boys high school basketball triumph over the stunned Blue Streaks.

“Coach always says just keep hustling till the end of the play,” Veldhuizen said of Randy Montgomery. “If you do that, before long, things will go your way.”

Veldhuizen had learned his lesson in the first quarter. The 6-foot-3 forward grabbed an offensive rebound and stuck that one home with five seconds to go, breaking a 10-10 tie.

In a game as close as this, as intense and evenly played as this one was, those two tie-breaking stickbacks stood out. Maciag’s

3-pointer at the first-half buzzer forged a 19-19 tie, too.

It also helped Hoover that it won the rebounding battle, held a 5-2 edge in 3-pointers and matched Lake in turnovers at 14.

“I think we’re improving,” Montgomery said after his team emerged at 8-5 overall and 3-4 in the league. “Guys are starting to find a niche, starting to (get confident). It’s starting to come.

“We won in double overtime Friday (against GlenOak). We were down eight and tied it. The last two games have been very exciting.”

There was no one offensive star on either side. Hoover’s Taylor Moore and Lake’s Ryan Coen were the only scorers in double figures, both with 13 points.

But, Montgomery pointed out, Dom Iero and Maciag combined for five 3s and 17 points, “when (Lake) was doubling on Moore and Harrison (Blackledge).”

Lake fell to 11-2 overall and into a first-place tie with Perry and Jackson in the league at 6-2.

The Blue Streaks had fought back from an 8-0 start to the game. Then, they came back from two seven-point, fourth-quarter deficits to tie the game at 40 on Chase Vaudrin’s flying mid-air bucket from the baseline with four seconds left, courtesy of Josh Duerr’s perfect pass.