The Newport Knights rally against the Issaquah Eagles boys basketball team in a battle between Class 4A KingCo squads fell just short of completion.

The Knights, who trailed the Eagles for the entire contest, went on 17-7 run cutting the Eagles’ lead to 45-43 on a Calvin Throckmorton lay-up with five minutes remaining in regulation.

It was the closest the Knights would get for the remainder of the game.

Issaquah regained its composure in the final five minutes of play outscoring Newport 12-4 to close out a 56-47 victory on Jan. 3 at Newport High School in Factoria. Newport dropped to 6-3 overall with the loss. Throckmorton finished with 13 points and guard Jake Higgins scored a team-high 14 points in the loss. Issaquah head coach Jason Griffith said his team’s defensive strategy was to focus intensely on Newport’s dynamic duo.

“I thought we won the game on the defensive end tonight. It felt like we didn’t shoot as well as we usually shoot, but we made it extremely hard for Jake (Higgins) to get open looks and we worked hard on Calvin (Throckmorton) down low. I thought at the end of the day that was the difference,” Griffith said.

Newport head coach Steve Haizlip believes his team has plenty of room for improvement.

“We need to clean up a lot of things. We were pretty rough on the offensive and defensive end. I give a lot of credit to Issaquah. They played a great game offensively and defensively and had us on our heels. When you play as bad as we played, we were still in the game and kept working. We were right there and behind by just two points. We just kept battling,” Haizlip said.

The head coach said his team will try to get the 6 foot, 7-inch, Throckmorton the ball more in the low post in from this point on.

“I do think we have to get him the ball more. We’ll continue to work on that. It’s a long season and we just got to keep getting better,” he said.

Shaun Scott: 425-453-5045; sscott@bellevuereporter.com