Both teams’ strengths – and some of their weaknesses – were on display in an entertaining game between top Class AA teams Wednesday night at the Portland Expo.

In the final minutes, Portland High used quickness and tenacity to turn over Thornton Academy and snatch loose balls, overcoming a five-point fourth-quarter deficit to earn a 68-64 win and improve to 12-1.

Thornton lost its second straight and is now 11-2, but showed it could be dangerous from behind the arc as well as presenting multiple matchup problems going to the rim.

“We are good enough to have a great year but right now we’re not good enough to win a state championship. Yet,” Portland Coach Joe Russo said. “Tonight kind of showed why. We just did little things (wrong). We didn’t get our engines going. It showed that we still have stuff to learn.”

Portland, the defending state champion, edged ahead of idle Edward Little (13-0) to take over the top spot in the AA North Heal point standings. The Bulldogs received a strong all-around game from Manny Yugu, who scored 15 points and had numerous steals, tips and provocations that helped lead to many of Thornton’s 23 turnovers.

“The way we came out, it almost seemed like we didn’t have energy and I was just trying to score, be aggressive and get my teammates open looks,” Yugu said.

But the Bulldogs were 0 of 8 on 3-point attempts and had trouble stopping penetration down the lane by Thornton’s David Keohan (16 points, 9 of 10 free throws) and Evan Christensen (12 points, 7 of 10 free throws).

Thornton, which remained ranked second in AA South, had a significant edge from behind the 3-point arc, making 9 of 17 attempts. Austin Boudreau made six 3-pointers and scored a game-high 21 points. Avery Mackenzie chipped in with 11 points with three 3s, two coming in the first quarter when Thornton raced to a 16-8 lead.

Boudreau’s sixth 3-pointer gave Thornton a 58-53 lead with four minutes to play.

From that point, Portland took control with aggressive on-the-ball defense and an edge at the free-throw line. Portland made 9 of 12 free throws while Thornton was 4 of 8, including two misses on the front end of 1-and-1s.

“They created a couple turnovers (and) they made their free throws down the stretch,” said Thornton Coach Bob Davies.

Portland made six straight free throws, and got strong finishes in traffic from Yugu and Clay Hardy to go ahead 63-60 with 46 seconds to play.

Keohan cut the lead to one with two free throws with 37 seconds left.

Then Portland came through with two hustle plays, grabbing a pair of offensive rebounds on missed second free throws to extend a possession. The final result was three successful free throws (one each by Griffin Foley, Terion Moss and Yugu) to push the lead to 66-62 with 16 seconds to play.

Yugu then caused a final turnover and Pedro Fonseca got loose for a layup to ice the win.

Moss led Portland with 16 points; Foley added 15.

Portland also got early help from its bench. Not liking what he saw from his starters, Russo used 11 players in the first quarter, finishing with five reserves on the floor and trailing 17-12.

“The bench tonight was huge because they kept us in the game. We could have been down by double digits easy,” Russo said.

Steve Craig can be reached at 791-6413 or:

scraig@pressherald.com

Twitter: SteveCCraig