Park hung with Stillwater for a half, trailing 31-24 at the break, but couldn’t run with the host Ponies in the second half in an 84-51 Suburban East Conference boys basketball game Friday, Stillwater outscored Park 53-27 after the break to win the contest going away, Park fell to 1-4 in the SEC and 2-5 on the season. Stillwater kept pace with league-leading East Ridge (6-0, 7-4), improving to 4-1 I the conference and 8-4 overall.

OT Omot led Pak with 16 points. Miskar Esayas added 11. AJ Kennedy and Dominic Batts had five points each.

Park hosts Forest Lake (05, 3-8) on Friday, starting at 7 p.m.

Irondale 50, Park 49

Park had two chances in the final minute to win the game, but neither shot would fall in a tough 50-49 loss to visiting Irondale Wednesday.

Park inbounded the ball with 5.6 seconds left and the ball ended up, as expected, in OT Omot’s hands. He was double teamed and put up a long desperation shot that bounced off. In the scrum that followed Dominic Batts ended up with the ball and put up a last gasp shot that also failed to find the mark and that was the ball game.

It was Park’s third loss by one or two points this season. The Wolfpack slipped to 1-3 in the Suburban East Conference and 2-4 on the season. Irondale went to 2-2 in the SEC and 5-4 on the season.

“We’re so close,” said Park head coach Mike Weah. “We feel like we’re really close to where we want to be at. Three losses this year that we’ve had. We’ve had one two-point loss and two one-point losses. So you’ve got to keep your head up and we’ve got to understand that on the scoreboard it says we lost tonight, but at the end of the day we actually competed hard. We still don’t have a lot of experience on that court so it’s like, we’ll figure it out. We can’t let this game determine the rest of the season.”

Park led 37-29 with 12:32 to play but managed just 12 points the rest of the game and were outscored 21-12 by Irondale.

“A lot of nerves,” Weah said. “You could see us on the court we were very nervous. I’ve got to do a better job of getting us back together. I went into it thinking let these guys play through it and they’ll figure it out but that wasn’t the right call for me to make. I feel like I should have taken a bigger initiative earlier.”

Omot led Park with 17 points and David Ola-Kazim had 15, but that was really it for the Park offense. No other player scored more than five points.

Park guard Anthony Giadyu drives against the Irondale defense Wednesday. Photo by John Molene