Slow motion is meant for the highlight reel, not the basketball floor.

Slowed by an ongoing onslaught of illness unlike any he has ever seen, coach Brady Ovitt and his sniffling, sneezing Savage Heat shuffled their way through a pair of Typhoid Mary games last week, falling 67-32 at District 14C leading Charlo Thursday before (sort of) rebounding to edge Two Eagle River 41-40 in Hot Springs Saturday.

Now 6-3 in 14C action and 10-5 overall, the Heat close out season play this week, playing at Mission in a non-conference game Tuesday and hosting Alberton in the regular season ending game, a 14C affair Thursday.

Ovitt Is not impressed with the amount of crud, of illness his team has had to deal with these last few weeks. 

“It has been crazy,” he said. “We had three or four kids miss two days of school each last week. We were out of it physically, were moving like we were in slow motion in Charlo.”

Not ones to not take advantage, the Vikings did, scoring the win, avenging an earlier rare loss to the Heat in Hot Springs in the process.

Walking winded as they were, the Heat were led by sick seniors Callie Cano and Kara Christensen who scored nine and seven points each in Charlo. Eleanor Massey added seven points for Hot Springs, Kora Hensrude five and Dakota Slonaker four.

Brielle Zempel led Charlo with 24 points, GG Hawk scored 20 and Maizey McDonald 12.

Back on court Saturday afternoon against Two Eagle, the Heat managed to pull out the tight win.

After an intense back and forth struggle all game long it came down to a wild finish to settle the outcome. Once again, Christensen was clutch down the stretch.

With 2:14 remaining in the game, Christensen hit a pair of free throws to put the Heat ahead 39-37. After Keke Tenas rained in a 3-pointer to give Two Eagle a brief 40-37

lead, Christensen was fouled again with 1:38 left and again calmly converted both charity tosses to make it 41-40 Heat.

Although there was a frenetic sequence of action following those free throws, none of that action produced any more scoring and the Heat prevailed by the final score of 41-40.

Christensen led the Heat with 14 points in the game, Hensrude scored 12, Mackenzie Johnson five, Slonaker four and Massey and Cano three each.

Tenas scored a game-high 17 points for the Eagles and Justina Nicolai added nine.