News Photo by Jonny Zawacki Alpena’s Jameson Pierrelus (30) makes a jump shot over Wildcats defender Desmon Dawson (12) during the first half of a men’s basketball game on Saturday at Park Arena.

The rough final season for Alpena Community College head coach Frank McCourt and his Lumberjacks continued on Saturday as they fell at home during the teams annual Hoops for Hope game, losing to Wayne Community College by a final score of 87-76 Saturday at Park Arena.

The Lumberjacks were able to hang with Wayne most of the night, but again struggled near the end of the game and eventually came up short.

The teams went back and forth through the first seven minutes of the game as Alpena scored five straight points to take a 13-12 lead and force Wildcats head coach Rogeric Turner to call a timeout.

Wayne responded after the timeout, scoring seven unanswered points to take a 20-12 lead and were able to build on its lead going on a 10-2 run to grab a 12 point lead with under 10 minutes to play as they were led by Desmond Dawson who was on fire in the first seven minutes of the game, pouring in 10 of his 20 points in the game during that span.

After falling behind by 13, the Lumberjacks went on a 10-2 run of their own to cut the lead back to five with 2:31 left to play in the first half.

Again, Wayne extended the lead and scored six of the final seven points of the half to take a 10 point lead into the break.

Alpena came out of the half and began to heat up from beyond the three point line as the Lumberjacks connected on five three-pointers during the first eight minutes of the second half and were able to get back to within three points.

Trailing 62-59 with 10:39 to go, Turner again used a timeout to help his team settle down and figure things out and that’s exactly what the Wildcats did.

Wayne scores six straight points out of the timeout to get its lead back to nine and continue to find ways to score as they took an 83-69 lead with just under four minutes to play.

Alpena did all it could late, but suddenly the three’s that were falling early in the half wouldn’t go when they needed them the most and the Wildcats were able to knock down shots at the free throw line to put the game on ice and hand Alpena another loss on its home court.

Rayvlon Croon led all scorers with a game high 22 points in the win for Wayne. Dawson added 20 and Roshaun Brown collected 14 points. Everyone on the Wildcats roster cracked the scoring column in the victory.

The Lumberjacks were led by Trenton LaVergne who scored 20 points on the night. Tim Hopkins added 15 points, Michael Stuart scored 14 points and Jameson Pierrelus chipped in with 12 points.

Alpena falls to 1-16 overall and 0-12 in conference play.

The Lumberjacks will be back in action Wednesday when they hit the road to take on Oakland Community College.

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WAYNE CC (87): R. Croon, 5 12-14 22; R. Watson, 3 0-0 8; J. Jackson, 2 0-0 4; J. Dixon, 1 0-0 2; D. Dawson, 8 4-4 20; W. Blue, 2 0-0 4; J. King, 1 3-4 5; D. Tate, 2 0-0 4; Y. Cooper, 1 2-2 4; R. Brown, 6 2-4 14.

ACC (76): K. Adams, 0 1-2 1; T. LaVergne, 9 0-0 20; T. Hopkins, 5 3-3 15; G. Burton, 1 0-0 2; N. Skiba, 1 0-0 3; M. Stuart, 4 2-3 14; D. Ross, 2 2-2 6; J. Pierrelus, 3 5-5 12; D. Middleton, 2 0-3 4.