The Greyhounds found the scoring they needed to bounce back from the slow start to the game, but never recovered from a 10-0 Madison run in the fourth quarter that helped the Bulldogs pull away to a 54-45 win.

Mitch Jarvais led all scorers with 15 points to go with eight rebounds for the Bulldogs (12-1), who beat the Greyhounds by 21 points a week earlier in Madison.

Henry Doyle led Lisbon (6-6) with 13 points, while Jonah Sautter and Sean Scott added nine apiece.

“It really came down to about a two-minute stretch in the fourth quarter where we didn’t execute offensively,” Lisbon coach Jake Gentle said. “You’ve got to give Madison credit. They played really solid defense, especially in the fourth quarter.”

A 3-pointer by Scott gave the Greyhounds a 34-33 lead early in the fourth period. But those would be their only points for more than three minutes as the Bulldogs scored the next 10 in a row.

Evan Bess hit three out of four from the free-throw line to put Madison in front to stay. Jarvais followed with a 3-pointer from the left corner and Sean Whalen (13 points) made it 40-34 with a steal and layup, prompting the Greyhounds to take a time out with 3:46 left.

Lisbon missed a shot out of the time out, and Whalen turned it into a fast break layup on the other end. A Bess free throw made it 43-34 before Doyle ended the drought with a pair of free throws with 2:33 left. 

Whalen answered with a putback. Sautter followed with a hoop inside for Lisbon’s first field goal in about four minutes to make it 45-38. But the deficit was too much for the Greyhounds to overcome, as the Bulldogs shot 12-for-16 from the foul line in the quarter.

“We picked it up defensively,” Madison coach Jason Furbush said. “They rushed a few shots and we transitioned well and made our foul shots down the stretch.”

Madison started the game with a box-and-one defense that had Bess shadowing Sautter. Though not necessarily caught off-guard by the wrinkle, Lisbon did turn the ball over on five of its first six possessions, and the Bulldogs jumped out to a 10-2 lead.

“Bess held Sautter to nine points tonight and I think he’s a 20-point-a-night guy,” Furbush said. “Bess did a great job on him tonight.”

“We haven’t really seen many of those junk defenses, but we’ve been preparing for it all year,” Gentle said. “I thought we did a good job of executing once we were able to get through that little bit at the beginning.”

Once the Greyhounds started taking care of the ball, they started knocking down shots, making four of six in the quarter to close within 11-9 at the end of the first.

Lisbon went cold from the field in the second quarter (2-for-9) and the Bulldogs built a 17-10 lead. But the Greyhounds didn’t lose their aggressiveness and, led by Doyle and Tyrese Joseph (five points, nine rebounds), got to the free-throw line regularly in a 9-1 run to end the first half to take a 19-18 lead at the intermission.