They got that bounce — or a few of them — off the hands of junior Owen Birkholz. Birkholz’s long 3 near the MVL bench bounced off the rim and pinballed in to beat the buzzer, lifting the Chargers to a 62-60 comeback win over Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop in a nonconference boys basketball game.

Following a pair of Cole Jacobson free throws that put the Firebirds in front 60-59, the Chargers had 2.6 seconds left and no timeouts to get the inbounds pass in and put up a shot. Birkholz got the inbounds pass, took a couple of dribbles and got off his 3-point attempt, which bounced off the rim twice and rattled in to the roar of the home crowd.

“It was huge,” Birkholz said. “I wasn’t thinking a while lot, we just had to get the ball in and there was only three seconds left, so I was just thinking, ‘Shoot it,’ and it went in.”

Birkholz finished with a team-high 16 points, including four 3s in the second half, his final 3 being the dagger. Pierson Brau finished with 14 points, eight rebounds, four blocks and three assists for MVL, while Blake Sexton had 10 points and Trace Gunderson chipped in 9 points.

Birkholz

Cole Jacobson was an all-around force for GFW again as he finished with 31 points and seven rebounds, Kaden Rieke had 7 points and six rebounds and Luke Bastian had seven rebounds.

Luke Merseth scored first to give MVL the first lead, but Cole Jacobson was quick to answer with a 3. MVL led 9-6 after free throws by Brau, but GFW took the lead the rest of the half following a floater by Eric Herrera and a step-back corner 3 from Cole Jacobson to put the Firebirds up 11-9.

The Firebirds started to heat up near the end of the half, taking a 27-16 lead on an and-one by Owen Swenson and taking their largest lead of the half, 33-18, on a 3 by Bastian.

Cole Jacobson led the way at the half with 16 points.

“In the first half, he was hitting amazing shots, I mean I think we actually did a pretty good job of contesting, but he’s just that good,” MVL head coach Kory Kettner said of Cole Jacobson.

Staff photo by Travis Rosenau Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Connor Bode celebrates with the student section after making a late 3 to take the lead during a boys basketball game against Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop on Tuesday night at MVL High School.

GFW head coach Ryan Jacobson said he was proud of his team’s defense and ability to compete on the road against a strong team.

“Basketball’s a game of runs and we talked about it at halftime that on their home floor, they’re going to come out and they’re going to make a run,” coach Jacobson said. “That’s just how it is, that’s how the game goes. … We’re going to make ours, and we kept it and pushed it back out a little bit and I was just really proud of how the guys competed on defense. We’ve come out here [to MVL] on the short end of the stick where we’re not even close in the game.”

The Chargers started with a zone and took a little bit to get the hang of it, but eventually they felt more comfortable with it.

“Defensively, we went 2-3 [zone] coming out of the gate, we really hadn’t practiced it,” Kettner said. “I thought we played it pretty well. We made the shots tough on them and that’s all you can do is just make those shots be tough and contested and hope that they miss them, then you just go and clean up.”

The Chargers chipped away at their deficit in the second half, but Cole Jacobson continued attacking to keep the Firebirds in front. After Birkholz scored on a putback bucket and a 3 to have the Chargers down 36-31, a 3 by Cole Jacobson and a bucket inside by Matthew Lee gave the Firebirds a double-digit lead back.

A baseline-driving bucket by Birkholz had the Chargers down 46-45, but the Firebirds answered with a bucket from Swenson and a 3 by Brandon Long. Rieke had a 3 to beat the shot clock and put GFW up 54-49 with a little more than three minutes left, but Birkholz got that 3 back following a timeout. Sexton tied the game up at 54-all, but Cole Jacobson put the Firebirds back in front right after with a drive to the hoop. Connor Bode knocked down a corner 3 with 31 seconds left to give the Chargers their first lead since early in the first half.

After an MVL timeout, Cole Jacobson scored inside to put GFW ahead again, but Birkholz sank a pair of free throws on the other end with 9.1 seconds left to give the Chargers the lead. That lead was brief as Cole Jacobson got the free throws back seconds later, but Birkholz got the last laugh with his buzzer-beater.

“We worked well as a team in the second half,” Birkholz said. “First half was pretty rough, but we battled back, brought the energy up in the second half and I think that was really what helped us battle back and end up with a shot like that.”

MVL (3-1) is at Maple River for a South Central Conference game on Thursday night, while GFW (3-2) is in Hector to take on Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart in a Tomahawk Division game on Thursday night.