In its three total wins from last season, the Heritage boys' basketball team was never able to string back-to-back victories throughout all of 2011-12.

This year, less than halfway through the season, the Patriots have now reached that feat twice. The second pair of wins was achieved Tuesday when the Patriots defeated Region 8-AAAAA and cross-town foe Salem 65-60 on their home court.

"I thought it went great," Heritage coach Drew Williams said. "Salem is incredibly talented."

The Patriots (7-5, 3-3) negated that talent with strong shooting from the field and even stronger play under the boards.

While the Patriots were making close to 50 percent of their shots, they were keeping the Salem Seminoles (5-4, 4-2) at bay and cleaning up the misses.
Heritage came down with 27 defensive rebounds, including 10 each by Terrell Flowers and Eric McIver.

"I just think we did a pretty good job of boxing out really," Williams said. "We talked about how Salem was as big as we were and probably a little more athletic than we were, and we did a really good job boxing out,"

Rebounding kept Heritage in the game throughout, and even up by as many as seven at one point during the game.

When Salem tied it with around two minutes left, Williams went to his bench and got a spark from an unexpected place.

Junior Kristopher Bridgeman scored just five points Tuesday, but none were bigger than his 3-pointer with under 2 minutes to play to tie it up.

After that Heritage held off the Salem Seminoles to come away with the region win.

Bridgeman and Flowers both provided big plays off the bench, with Bridgeman dishing out 10 assists and Flowers scoring eight points along with his 10 rebounds.

"Our post play was strong and our bench play was really strong," Williams said.

McIver paced the Patriots with 17 points.

Heritage gets back to action Thursday against Grayson in Walnut Grove's Christmas tournament.

Girls: Heritage 41, Salem 39
Trailing 30-25 after three quarters, the hosts Lady Patriots outscored Salem 16-9 in the fourth quarter for their third win in four games
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Salem got 10 points from Taylor King but it wasn't enough in Heritage's 41-39 win.