Staff photo / Neel Madhavan. Poland’s Carson Maurer (12) gets the ball stripped by Boardman’s Trey DePietro (2) and Luke Ryan (12) Tuesday night.

BOARDMAN — In a low scoring game, just a few points in either direction can swing the outcome of a game.

In the third quarter Tuesday night, Boardman used a 9-0 run to seize a seven-point lead over Poland heading into the final period. A lead that, most of the time under those circumstances, would have held.

But Poland had other plans. The Bulldogs changed things up defensively and outscored the Spartans 12-3 in the fourth quarter to win 28-26.

“They got comfortable against our zone so we went to some man-to-man to put some pressure on them and we actually made some shots,” Poland head coach Eric Fender said. “We were patient offensively and we worked and got open shots. We forced some things in the first half. So we were lucky our defense held strong.”

Poland tied the game 26-26 and called timeout with possession of the ball with 35.5 seconds left. With leading scorer Ross Dedo out with an illness, the Bulldogs needed someone else to answer the call.

Out of the timeout, Poland was patient — probing Boardman’s defense looking to penetrate. With about 12 seconds left, senior Christian Colosimo pulled the ball out and looked to penetrate. He drove left and got a shot off in the lane, but it went over the rim. But senior Jack Fulton was there on the weak side, jumping to get the putback layup to put Poland ahead with six seconds left.

“(We wanted to) attack the hoop,” Fender said. “They had six fouls, so we just wanted to attack and try to get to the free-throw line. Jack, who just came back from an injury, just stepped up and finished it. That’s all you can ask for. These guys stepped up (with Dedo out) and covered each other’s butts and it ended up working out in the end.”

However, even with Fulton’s basket, Boardman still had a chance.

With 5.3 seconds left, the Spartans had to go the length of the floor. The first inbound pass was deflected out-of-bounds by Poland near midcourt, and only 0.6 seconds elapsed off the clock.

Out of another timeout, Boardman tried a give-and-go off the inbounds pass, but a backcourt violation resulted in a turnover and Poland got the ball back with 2.6 seconds left.

Still, the Spartans weren’t done. They stole the Bulldogs’ ensuing inbounds pass and called timeout, which gave them one last chance to go the length of the floor with 1.6 seconds left.

A three-quarters court pass ended up in the hands of freshman Kaden Mayhew and his fading floater rimmed out as time expired.

“The first time we were trying to get (senior Trey) DePietro with a head of steam up the floor,” Boardman head coach Pat Birch said. “With five seconds, we thought maybe he could get to the rim with his long strides. The second one, we were trying to go back to the inbounder and I think he was going to get a look there, but we just gave it to him a step too soon. Then, the third one we got a look off and that kind of summed up our night where the ball was halfway down.”

After opening the season 3-0, the Spartans have now lost five straight games — falling by an average margin of about 8.0 points per game during that stretch.

“A lot of it is intrinsic stuff where I don’t really feel like we’re coming every day to really get better,” Birch said. “That’s on me as a coach. I have to try to squeeze that out. I think we have some individual talent, but it’s not meshing for whatever reason lately. It happens in sports. Sometimes it’s hard to put into words because it’s not necessarily one thing. A million different things right now are pulling against us and we have to start pulling the other way. I still believe we’re a good team. The last few weeks we haven’t shown that, but I trust that these guys will get it back on track.”