In a game where the Sudbury Five were short on big men, one of their smallest did his best to carry the team to victory.

But even a 41-point performance by Braylon Rayson, perhaps the best this season by the reigning National Basketball League of Canada MVP, wasn’t quite enough for the Five to keep pace for 48 minutes in a 137-118 loss to the Halifax Hurricanes at Scotiabank Centre in Halifax on Thursday night.

“The guys did great,” said Logan Stutz, Sudbury’s head coach and general manager. “They stuck to the game plan and Halifax had to make some shots to beat us, and that’s exactly what they did. We put up enough points, but Halifax converted and we kind of ran out of gas.

“Braylon played great. He knew what he had to do, he knew he would have to take over the game and he did for a while there, but at the end of the day, it’s a long road trip, we ran out of gas and Halifax has some great veterans who made some shots and some tough plays when they had to, and which we couldn’t come up with due to fatigue.”

Jaylen Bland scored 22, JR Holder 19 and Brady Skeens 14 for Sudbury, which fell to 11-9 on the season. Stutz, who activated himself as a player-coach earlier in the week, did see limited floor time late in the first half. He finished with two points.

“It felt good to get back on the court, but it’s a fast, strong game,” said Stutz, who had last played a professional game with the Windsor Express in 2017-18. “There are some good players out there. It was fun to get out there and I had to get out there, but it’s a very fast, strong game”

Antoine Mason scored 28, Cliff Clinkscales 27, Joel Kindred and CJ Washington 19 for the Hurricanes, who improved to 8-14 with their third straight victory.

The long ball was working early and often for the Five, who saw seven different players — Rayson, Holder, Bland, Jarryn Skeete, Joey Puddister and Cornelius Hudson — strike from downtown in the opening half.

Much of the damage was done in the opening quarter, which saw the visitors finish with a 39-28 advantage, before they started to cool off and the Hurricanes began to assert themselves better in the paint, while hitting a handful of their own three-pointers.

Skeens, who scored all 14 of his points in the opening half and pulled down four rebounds, got into foul trouble late, prompting Stutz to enter the game for the first time.

Sudbury’s bench boss hit a couple of free throws, his first in the NBLC this season.

Rayson led Sudbury with a total of 16 points, while Holder had 13 and Bland and Skeete eight apiece at the break.

Clinkscales led all players with 17, while Mason scored 13, Kindred 11 and CJ Washington added nine for the host side in the opening half.

Rayson was simply brilliant in the third frame, scoring 21 of his game-high 4 in that period alone, while Bland and Holder added six on a pair of three-pointers, but few of their teammates could match that success down the stretch.

Jordan Washington, with 11 in the quarter, helped keep the pace high for the home team, only helping to wear out the Sudbury squad.

The fourth was nearly all Halifax, aside from an eight-point effort from Bland. Mason’s nine points and five more from Clinkscales — whose previous season high was 16, also against Sudbury — helped the Hurricanes more than double the Five, 28-12, and send Sudbury home with back-to-back losses for just the third time this season.

Mamadou Gueye, who played for the Five in 2018-19, made some big plays at both ends on Thursday, hitting a big three and then hustling back to defend Bland and help force a turnover. He finished with 11 points.

Total rebounds favoured the Hurricanes, 58-40, as did points in the paint, by a 60-30 margin, and Halifax more than doubled Sudbury when it came to points off the bench, 38-14.

The Five return home on Saturday to face the London Lightning in a 7:05 p.m. start.

“It’s going to be tough,” Stutz said. “We have to rest our bodies and try to recover as fast as possible, then we have to build a game plan, try to follow it, and hopefully, we can play four quarters. We have seen that three and a half is just not enough and some of that is just due to our numbers and the availability of players, so we have to see what we can do there and try to get some reinforcements.”

bleeson@postmedia.com

Twitter: @ben_leeson