Submitted photos – Action from Tuesday night’s game at South Fork.

The Hoopa boys won on the road for the second straight day on Tuesday night to advance to the semifinals of the Dick Niclai tournament.

Coming into the week, the Warriors had lost six straight games and didn’t even know if they would get to play in this year’s H-DNL postseason tournament.

But fueled by a belief in themselves, they won 60-50 in a tournament play-in game at Ferndale on Monday night and followed that with a 70-58 win at South Fork on Tuesday.

The win avenged two earlier losses to South Fork in the Little 4.

“I thought we played pretty well,” Hoopa head coach Roman Hutt said. “We didn’t let outside influences rattle us, and we didn’t let things on the court rattle us. And people stepped up when we needed them to.”

The win sets up a semifinal showdown against Big 5 co-champs Arcata at College of the Redwoods on Thursday night at 6 p.m.

And that won’t worry the Warriors, who are playing some of their best ball of the season at the right time.

“They all did their job,” Hutt said of his players after Tuesday’s win. “They all did the things I asked them to do.”

Especially late in the game.

The Warriors were outscored in each of the first two quarters and trailed by eight at halftime.

However, they would rally in the second half and grew in stature as the game progressed, battling back to take a one-point lead going into the fourth quarter and then outscoring the Cubs 26-15 in the final period.

Lyle McKinnon scored a team-high 21 points in the victory and was a force in the paint, while teammate Brian Richards added 15 points and had a big night on the boards.

Sophomore Malaki McCoy also was influential in the win and finished with 12 points, including making some big 3-pointers in the second half to help key the rally.

Brandon Romero added nine points, Neil Moon had eight points and Tristan Billings chipped in five points to round out a balanced offensive team performance.

File photo

South Fork head coach Taylor Morrow praised the Warriors’ performance.

“The absolute better team won tonight,” he said. “They wanted it way more and played better in every aspect.”

It wasn’t all bad news for the Cubs, who will now turn their attention to next week’s North Coast Section playoffs.

“Our positive is that some of our role players really tried to step up,” Morrow said. 

Trevor Hunt scored 12 points in the loss, including a couple of big 3s, while Justin Freitas and Broc Contreras both “provided excellent energy off the bench, which we really needed,” the coach added. 

“A huge congrats to Roman Hutt and the Warriors,” Morrow said. “Love to see a team compete at that level.”

With the win, the Warriors are now 8-12, while the Cubs dropped to 18-8.