Battered and bruised, Lynden boys basketball is still Lynden boys basketball.

More than a dozen state championships and a SunDome that has served as a home away from home have helped the Lions build an air of invincibility.

So, every time late Tuesday afternoon that it seemed third-ranked Selah might pull away from No. 9 Lynden, the Lions would start reeling in the Vikings.

“When we had those turnovers, we were like, ‘Oh, my goodness,’” Selah coach Jordan Starr said. “But we figured we’d make a play late.”

Several of them in fact, and enough to give the Viks a 68-62 victory on the second day of the SunDome Shootout.

There was the slip screen with Oliver Pepper feeding Finnegan Tait for a dunk, then a backdoor with Carson Decker taking a Pepper pass for a reverse layin, and finally Pepper drilling a 3-pointer to 

help hold off the Lions and give Selah a statement victory.

“It’s huge, it’s giving me chills right now,” Starr said. “There’s a lot of belief in the locker room because of this.”

That belief might’ve been muted early when the Lions scored the first 10 points of the game.

Selah, though, chipped away, eventually taking a two-point lead into halftime.

“We just trust in each other,” said Pepper, who scored a game-high 24 points. “That’s the thing about basketball – everybody working together.”

The Vikings extended the lead to seven by the end of the third quarter and pushed the advantage to 59-50 on Tait’s flush.

There was no quit in the Lions, though, and they climbed to with a bucket at 59-61. Pepper answered with his second trey of the game to push the lead back to five, and then sealed the victory with a pair of free throws with 12.5 seconds left.

“We run through our stuff every day, we try to be detailed with it and when the opportune time happens, hopefully we can hit it and we were able to today,” Starr said.

Tait and frontcourt mate Jaxon Benge played big against the Lions, who were without leading scorer Spencer Adams (separated shoulder earlier this month). Ty Jorgenson (broken leg before the season) and saw Lewis Whitney exit early Tuesday with a hand injury.

Tait scored 10 points, and Benge had eight points and 10 rebounds.

“Consistently he’s been doing that all year,” Starr said of Benge. “He’s relentless, he keeps banging on the boards and Finn is down there with him and they’re fighting and clawing.”

JR DePell added 13 points and Decker chipped in 10 for the Viks (8-0), who visit West Valley on Friday.

Lynden (6-4) returns to Northwest Conference action Jan. 5 with a trip to Mount Vernon.

The Lions hope to see their lineup bolstered later in the season.

“We’ve been hit by the injury bug this year,” Lynden coach Brian Roper said. “That’s part of sports, that’s part of life, but it’s not fun.”