Alex Hartman almost didn’t make it to overtime Saturday for the Vancouver Volcanoes. Once he did, he claimed it for his own.

Hartman scored 11 points in the extra period, including nine on 3-point shots, as the Volcanoes won their home opener 118-108 over the Bellingham Slam at Clark College’s O’Connell Sports Complex.

“If Coach was going to leave me in for overtime,” Hartman said following the International Basketball League contest, “I wanted to show that I’m not just a crazy player out there.”

With 16 seconds to play in regulation of the tense, physical contest, Hartman and Bellingham’s Jacob Stevenson both were called for technical fouls. Hartman had charged down the court and attempted to start an altercation with Stevenson.

“The play before that, it was a cheap shot,” Hartman said. “It was an elbow to the temple.”

Stevenson said: “I got charged, and they called a double technical. There had been contact, I don’t know. There was a cluster of people.”

Hartman scored eight points in regulation, then made a pair of 3-pointers for the first six points in overtime.

“Alex said, ‘Have faith in me. Go with me,’ ” Volcanoes coach Bryan Hunter said. “He really did everything correct in overtime.”

While the Volcanoes (1-1) pulled away in the extra period, avenging a 117-95 loss the previous night at Bellingham, their most important points might have come during the halftime intermission. Bellingham had two points taken away, leaving the Slam with a 55-49 lead, because the official scorebook had a different tally than the scoreboard and the Bellingham scorekeeper.

The Slam (3-1) could have used those points.

A three-point play by Lawrence Blackledge, who had a game-high 25, gave Vancouver a 92-91 lead with 4:40 to play. It was the Volcanoes’ first lead of the second half.

The game was tight for the remainder of regulation, and Bellingham tied it 98-98 with 7.9 seconds to play when Morris Anderson threw an alley-oop to Ryan Diggs for a layup.

For the Volcanoes, the game marked the home opener of their seventh season, and team executive Clay Bonds said about 900 fans were in attendance.

“That’s not too bad for the first home game,” he said. “We put a lot more emphasis on advertising this year.”

On the court, Vancouver got 23 points and 16 rebounds from Prairie High School graduate Devin Uskoski, who went 7 of 9 from the field, and 20 points from Andre Murray.

Hunter, meanwhile, liked what he saw.

“I think the fourth quarter and the overtime, we started to execute,” the coach said. “Alex Hartman had two wide-open shots because we executed well.”

Hunter attributed that to the presence of Antwan Williams, who missed the season opener.

“Tonight we had a point guard,” Hunter said. “We were able to up our plays and run our plays.”

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