Michael Davenport scored 26 points, grabbed six rebounds and dished out eight assists, and Brandon McClester added 25 points and six boards to lead six Jackals in double figures en route to a 118-101 victory over Chautauqua in Game 1 of the North American Basketball League Northeast Conference best-of-3 championship series on Friday night at the Physical Education Complex at Jamestown Community College.

Game 2 is scheduled for 4 p.m. Sunday, back at JCC.

A Jackals’ win secures the conference title. A Hurricane victory would force the if-necessary game at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the same site.

Jamestown coach Ken Crosby wouldn’t mind bottling some of that effort, particularly in the fourth quarter, and saving it until tip-off of Game 2.

Jamestown’s Daniel Mulamba is about to block a layup attempt by Chautauqua’s Ralph Williams during Game 1 of the North American Basketball League Northeast Conference championship at Jamestown Community College on Friday night. P-J photo by Lisa Monacelli

Leading by only four points, 83-79, after Chautauqua’s Travonta Gatewood nailed a 3-pointer at the third-period buzzer, the Jackals used a 9-0 run in less than two minutes early in the fourth quarter to expand their lead to 94-81.

Leventrice Gray drilled a 3-pointer, Davenport threw down a dunk and Latrell Alford had a couple of buckets, including a highlight-reel dunk off a Gray miss to give the hosts some breathing room.

“Those guys came back out and just ran the court, made the buckets on their end and played tremendous defense to start the period,” Crosby said. “It happened almost every period that way, except for the first. We finished the second period strong and then started strong in the third, but the fourth was really the special one. That’s the one we really needed to put the exclamation point on it.”

The Jackals’ outburst forced Hurricane coach Jerome Moss to call a timeout with 9:19 remaining in the game to try and stop Jamestown’s momentum, but Chautauqua, which took some ill-advised shots in the first three minutes, didn’t get closer than nine points the rest of the way.

“I thought that we had some momentum going there and came down a couple times and didn’t get any ball movement,” Moss said. “We took a couple ill-advised 3s, they got a rebound, stretched it out and got a couple of layups.”

The Hurricane led by as many as six points in the first quarter, but the Jackals finished on a 10-0 run to take a 24-20 lead heading into the second period. In the second quarter, another strong Jamestown finish in the closing minutes, this time a 9-0 surge, propelled Jamestown to a 49-45 lead at the break.

After intermission, the Jackals’ lead grew to as many as 10 points, but back-to-back 3-pointers by Jonny Marsh and Ralph Williams, highlighted a 10-1 outburst to bring the Hurricane to within, 63-62, at the midway point of the third quarter. Jamestown’s lead stood at 83-79 following Gatewood’s trey at the buzzer.

The fourth quarter belonged to the Jackals, setting up Game 2 on Saturday.

“You never want to play that (if-necessary) game,” Crosby said. “That means they’ve got the momentum after the second game, so we’ve got the momentum right now and we’re excited about it. They’re probably down a little bit and they’ve got to come back to our floor, so we’re excited about Sunday to do exactly what we did today.”

Moss said getting back to having good ball movement will be the key for the Hurricane in Game 2.

“We have to be consistent with our ball movement and our help defense has to be better,” he said. “Early on we were getting good help defense and we stopped doing it … so we’ve got to go back to doing what we do.”

Joining Davenport and McClester in double figures for Jamestown were Damien Harris with 18 points and six assists; Alford with 16 points to go along with seven assists; Gray with 13 points and five rebounds; and Daniel Mulamba with 12 points and 14 rebounds. Xavier Churnac added 8 points and five boards.

Williams paced the Hurricane with a game-high 28 points, Marsh had 20, Larry Rivers collected 16 and Marcus Feagan added 14.