Staff photo / Preston Byers Boardman’s Jayse Varley celebrates Friday’s win at South Range.

BEAVER TOWNSHIP — South Range rallied its community to ‘pack the gym’ for Friday night’s boys basketball home game vs. Boardman to support athletic director Donee Feren during his battle with cancer, and Raider Nation did not disappoint.

In front of a near-capacity audience, many of whom wore the color purple or custom white shirts with “Feren’s Fanatics” printed on them, South Range pounced on the Spartans early, possibly feeding off the home crowd’s energy. But the Raiders’ frequent mistakes proved to be costly Friday, as Boardman capitalized en route to a 71-65 come-from-behind win.

“We knew it was going to be a great atmosphere to play in. … I’m really happy with how our boys fought back,” Spartans head coach Steve Flores said. “We got off to a slow start, big deficit at times, but they just kept fighting, doing what we asked them to do and we ended up coming out on top.”

Through the first few minutes of Friday’s game, it was all South Range; the Raiders led 13-4 as the halfway point of the period neared, but Boardman, which it would later do with even greater effect, made a run to make the deficit a manageable six-point gap by the end of the first.

The Spartans continued to close in on South Range in the second until they got within a basket, at which point the Raiders went on a 9-0 run, held Boardman without a basket for more than three-and-a-half minutes and went up by 11 points.

After enduring their cold streak, the Spartans heated up quickly and scored 13 points in the final 3:08 of the half, including a Jayse Varley four-point play with 2.4 seconds remaining, to send the game to half with the teams separated by four points.

Both teams emerged from the locker room with fast starts on their mind, resulting in baskets being traded for several minutes, but little changed in terms of South Range’s lead. However, with a Varley field goal 3:42 into the second half, Boardman officially started a game-changing, 14-0 run.

The Raiders, who led 44-39 until Varley’s shot, made just one more field goal in the period and committed numerous turnovers.

Meanwhile, the Spartans surged in front of South Range on a Varley basket before Braiden Bulkley made back-to-back 3-pointers to give Boardman a 51-44 lead. Tommy Titus’s buzzer-beating triple marked the only made shot for the Raiders down the stretch, and it cut his team’s deficit to five to start the final quarter.

South Range slowly erased its deficit over the majority of the fourth quarter, and with 1:53 to go, the Raiders’ Jack Carey sank a 3-pointer to make it a one-point game. But that would be as close as they would get for the rest of the night, as the Spartans scored eight straight points to pull away and secure the road win.

“If you watch the game, you’d see that we probably had about 25 turnovers. That’s the game for us right there,” South Range head coach Pat Carden said. “Our defense failed us, we allowed 70 points — that’s just not our formula to win. We need to keep the games in the 50s, maybe low-60s at the most. But if we give up 70 points, we’re just not going to be able to keep pace.”

Varley finished the night with a game-high 23 points. Jerry and Ryan Smith added 15 and 14 points, respectively, for the Spartans. Nick Toy, who kept the Raiders afloat with 20 second-half points, had 22 overall, while Gavin Hiscox and Titus had 18 and 10, respectively.

With the win, Boardman avoided a three-game losing streak and improved to 5-10 on the season. The Spartans return to All-American Conference action on Tuesday with a road game vs. Warren G. Harding.

South Range fell to 8-6 on the year with the loss, its second in a row after enjoying a six-game win streak. The Raiders will try to get back on track today with a home game vs. Northeast 8 Conference rival Poland while their hearts and minds are still with Feren, who was honored with a standing ovation between the first and second quarters Friday.

“We always preach to our guys, it’s bigger than basketball for us,” Carden said. “And this is clearly one of those times we can really use our high school sports and community to show some support to someone who shows so much support for us. … That’s fantastic that our community was able to come together and show our support tonight.”