BREMERTON — Toward the end of each practice, North Kitsap Vikings boys’ basketball coach Aaron Nations lines his team up for a drill he calls “pressure free throws.”

The second-year coach has each varsity player shoot a pair of foul shots. If they’re going in, running sprints is minimized.

But for each miss at the charity stripe, North runs two “down and backs,” hustling twice from one end of the floor to the other. And needless to say, it can become downright torturous.

“If they’re not making their free throws,” Nations said, “They’re running a lot.”

But the hardwood Norsemen reaped the benefits of this laborious drill Saturday, upstaging the Olympia Bears 70-67 to take third place in the overall Narrows League — and making 31-for-36 from the free throw line in the process.

The team’s composure shows they’ve come a long way, Nations said.

“It’s impressive,” he commented. “We haven’t been in these types of situations. They’re learning game by game.”

Jacob Gonzales led the way for NK, scoring 22 points and sinking a game-high 16-for-16 from the foul line. Jordan Henry scored 10 points and was also a perfect eight-for-eight from the line.

The highly physical contest was heavily spattered with fouls, each team going over the limit early which put both the Bears and Vikings at the line often. But North won the battle of nerves, even in the face of a 10-point deficit with only 5:33 left in the third quarter.

Trailing 36-30 going into the half, the team revamped its defense to pressure the Bears’ Jason Briggs, who had a game-high 29 points, 19 of which came in the first half.

“We talked about how we wanted to be more aggressive on Briggs,” Nations said of the half time talk. “We needed to make sure that he didn’t even get a breath of space.”

Crashing the boards also earned the Vikings more possession time, a huge advantage given the often-hacking defense of the Bears. The teams see-sawed back and forth in scoring, though once North tied the game on a Jared Prince 3-point play attempt 38-38, the Vikes never allowed Olympia another lead.

Elsewhere for North, post Ryan Young contributed 13 points. Nations also credited back-up point guard Chris Zeringer, who had 13 in the crucial game.

“He kept us in the game,” Nations said of Zeringer’s second quarter performance.