Four quarters proved not enough to separate the two unbeaten heavyweights.
It took a period of overtime, and some clutch play from Michael Ruske, for the St Kilda Saints to edge the Mid City Magic 96-94 at the Edgar Centre on Saturday.
The win puts the Saints clear at the top of the Dunedin men’s club basketball table, with a 5-0 record, as the first round concludes.
Ruske dropped 40 points, and facilitated plenty more, as the point guard continued a dominance that has spearheaded the Saints’ start to the season.
The last three of those 40 proved the defining play of overtime.
He came off a Lawson Morris-Whyte screen, but chose to back off, picked up his dribble and splashed a three-pointer.
That took the score to 93-88, a buffer that helped the Saints through to the end.
Yet the Magic did their part in this thriller.
Its quartet of Patrick Freeman (22 points), Joe Ahie (18 points), Mitchell Hughan (17 points) and Dallas Hartmann (16 points) kept it in touch the whole way.
And literally the whole way.
Aside from a period early in the second quarter, when the Saints led 55-47, the lead very rarely grew to beyond four for either side.
Freeman provided the bulk of the Magic’s early scoring, but Ruske was finding his way to the line to keep the Saints ahead 26-24 at the end of the first quarter.
The Magic jumped to a 39-35 lead in the second quarter, but the Saints responded with a 10-2 run to edge back ahead.
They held that to lead 52-47 at halftime, Lawson Morris-Whyte (21 points) and Tyler Lapham (11 points) stepping up late in the half.
The Saints held a slender lead through the third quarter, before the Magic again went ahead briefly in the fourth.
That lead changed hands another three times down the stretch, Ruske putting the Saints ahead 84-83 at the line, with just over a minute to play.
Morris-Whyte extended that by one, before Ahie scored with two seconds to play to make it 85-85.
Ruske and Hughan exchanged triples to open overtime, before Ruske hit his defending three-pointer, following two made free throws.
Ahie and Freeman both hit from deep as well, the latter’s bringing it back to 95-94 with 35 seconds left.
But the Saints were able to close out the win at the line.
The Magic Lions also won a thriller, as Noah McDowall hit a three-pointer with 12 seconds to go, edging the Andy Bay Falcons 104-103.
The Otago Boys’ High School guard had 17 points, while Toby Kendon led the Lions with 29 points.
Matt Pyper and Hamish Robertson had 32 and 28 points respectively for the Falcons.
In the late game, the City Rise Bombers claimed their first win of the season with a 95-63 trouncing of Varsity.
