RENO — You can bet there were some fans of the Spanish Springs boys basketball team, and maybe even a player and coach or two, who were thinking “here we go again,” Friday night at Hug.

The good news for Cougar fans was they didn’t have those sentiments when the final horn sounded on a 62-52 Spanish Springs High Desert League road win.

“I have to give the kids credit because I’m a raving lunatic,” Spanish Springs coach Kyle Penney said. “We have let leads slip away and I’m probably part of the reason we haven’t kept our poise at times.

“I’m hoping this win gives us confidence and gets us going.”

The Cougars have blown leads in two games against defending state champion Reno — including a 59-52 loss Tuesday — and in a previous loss to Hug. On Friday, Spanish Springs took a 36-22 halftime lead, but watched it all evaporate in the third period.

Spanish Springs (16-7, 5-3 HDL) managed just one point through the first 3:50 of the third quarter. Hug (13-6, 5-2) meanwhile scored nine points during that stretch. In fact, through the first 6:03 of the period, Hug outscored Spanish Springs 18-3. A Stephan Cramer putback put the finishing touches on the Hawks’ spurt that saw them forge ahead 40-39 with 1:57 still remaining in the third period.

That was probably about the time even the most loyal Cougar followers were beginning to worry about history repeating itself. However, Cougars senior Adam Miller stepped up in the clutch to keep the SSHS crew from falling apart.

After Cramer’s putback, Miller drilled a 3-pointer from the wing and made a driving layup on back-to-back possessions to put Spanish Springs back on top 44-40 and help hold Hug at bay.

Miller finished with a team-high 17 points. Taelor Marchbanks added 11 for the Cougars.

“I was just thinking, ‘not again,” Marchbanks said about his thoughts during the third-quarter drought. “I was just hoping we could get out of the hole and make a shot or two to silence the fans. It was getting crazy in there and the crowd was getting in our heads a little bit.

“But when we got out of the third with the lead still, we kind of thought we had taken their knockout punch and were still OK.”

The Cougars led 44-42 at the third quarter’s conclusion. There were still a few fireworks remaining. Hug scored the first four points of the quarter on buckets by Duke Williams and Anthony Johnson.

That gave the HHS hoopsters a 46-44 lead but it was their last of the night. Spanish Springs scored 12 of the next 14 points and wound up closing out the contest with an 18-6 explosion.

Hug got a dunk from Tre Johnson with 2:14 left in the league affair. It trimmed the Spanish Springs lead to 56-50, but the Hawks managed just one bucket the rest of the way.

“We had seven turnovers in the last three-plus minutes and couldn’t hit a shot,” Hug coach Bryan Voyles said. “That was huge. And our energy was down. Some mental fatigue got to us.”

The visiting Cougars took the momentum and ran away shortly after the opening tip. A Tre Johnson layup made the score 5-3 less than two minutes into the game, but Spanish Springs scored the next eight points and had built a 20-8 lead by the end of the first period.

Hug got within nine, 27-18, following a Courtney Gardner layup at the 3:47 mark of the second quarter. Spanish Springs then reeled off seven straight points to take its biggest lead of the game, 34-18.

“We created spacing real well and made good decisions in the first half,” Penney said. “And we made shots. We hit 6 of 9 3-pointers in the first half.”

Spanish Springs returns to the hardwood Tuesday for a 7 p.m. tilt against North Valleys.