After trailing by 13 at the half and rallying late with an intense comeback, the Pineville Mountain Lions fell just short of notching their third straight win of the season and fell to Oneida Baptist Institute 63-59 to tally their first loss of the season.

The loss will keep the Mountain Lions out of the All “A” Tournament, which is the most frustrating aspect of the loss, according to head coach Brad Levy.

“We’re not going to get to play in the All ‘A’ now,” he said. “That was one of our goals coming into the season. We wanted to get some early momentum by playing into the All “A” tournament and having a good showing in the tournament. That is the most frustrating part of the loss for us.”

Pineville was led by Sean Phipps with 19 points and five rebounds. He was followed by Keean Fuson with 16. Clay Goodin chipped in 13. Dalton Mason added four. Reed Baker added three. Landon Couch had two. Eli Thompson and Austin Fuson added one point each.

“Credit OBI with playing a great game,” said Levy. “They’ve got a couple of guys there that can really play. They played a good game against us, and we just weren’t able to get the job done.”

The Mountain Lions were 8-of-20 from the charity stripe during the game. They shot 41% from the field with a 29% mark from deep. Pineville connected on 40% of their free throws on the night.

“We left a lot of points on the floor,” said Levy. “We worked pretty hard on our free-throw shooting after our last game, and I thought we looked better from the line at practice. It just didn’t carry over to the game.

“We are going to shake this off and get back to work focusing on Middlesboro. They’ve got a good team, and they are coached very well. We expect it to be a tough game for us and look forward to defending our home court.”

With the loss, Pineville moved to 2-1 on the season. They will take on in-county rival Middlesboro in a Friday night boys and girls doubleheader at home. Tip-off for the first game is slated for 6 p.m.