The Thunder Mountain High School boys basketball team dropped back-to-back games at the Mt. McKinley Bank Holiday Classic basketball tournament in Fairbanks.

TMHS lost to tournament-host Monroe Catholic High School, 50-39, in its first game on Thursday night, before falling to No. 1-ranked Colony High School, 57-36, the following day at Monroe Catholic’s Boileau Hall.

“Both Colony and Monroe are very disciplined teams that execute their game plan quite efficiently,” TMHS coach John Blasco said. “When you make mistakes, they capitalize on them.”

“Colony is a very solid team,” he added. “They’ve got good height, athleticism, shooters and they run really good sets to get a variety of guys open.”

Junior Brady Carandang scored 18 points for the Falcons on Friday and has been the team’s most consistent long-distance shooter.

“We did a decent job of getting him open today and he was feeling good and knocked down six threes,” Blasco said.

Colony’s Patrick McMahon had 16 points while Colton Spencer, Wyatt Baker and Sullivan Menard each had eight.

The two teams will meet up for a second and third time in Thunder Mountain’s first home games next Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. at TMHS.

Thunder Mountain plays in its final game of the tournament against Lathrop on Saturday afternoon.

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• Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nainsworth@juneauempire.com. Follow Empire Sports on Twitter at @akempiresports.

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