Southridge's Alonzo Hoff (14) runs into resistance from Westview's Lucas D'Haem (25) during Friday's Metro League showdown.

BEAVERTON — When Westview’s James Kefgen finally got a shot from long range to drop, it was the biggest shot of the game.

After missing his first nine shots from beyond the arc, Kefgen drilled the go-ahead 3-pointer with 1:03 to play, lifting the No.4-ranked Wildcats to a 52-51 Metro League victory over the No.6 Southridge Skyhawks on Tuesday night at Southridge High School.

Westview’s Kai Russell scored a team-high 13 points as the Wildcats (16-4, 8-0 Metro) took a major step toward clinching their first outright league title, opening a two-game lead over the defending champion Skyhawks (17-4, 6-4) with four games remaining.

The game could have gone either way. Southridge led by as many as seven points in the second quarter, Westview led by as many as four at the end of the third quarter, and then there were five lead changes in the fourth quarter before Kefgen stepped into his game-winner from the left corner.

Even after that, Southridge had two more possessions to try and take the lead. The first ended with a turnover on an off-the-ball offensive foul. The other ended with a lob pass intended for Alonzo Hoff under the basket that Westview’s Dayton Jenkins deflected out of harm’s way as time expired.

“It’s a great win,” Westview coach Mike Wolf said. “That’s a top-five team in the state, for sure. Like this is how you have to play if you want to get to the Chiles Center, if you want to advance and compete for a state championship, you’ve got to play teams like this.

“It’s not lost on us that it gives us a two-game lead with four games left and Westview’s never won a league title. That’s something I’ve tried to downplay in conversations, but they’re kids and they’re aware of it. That was a goal for them — to win the Metro League title.”

Southridge’s Keenan Reckamp finished with a game-high 14 points, while Hoff had 13 points and Elijah Thomson scored 12.

“I loved the way our guys competed,” Southridge coach Phil Vesel said. “We didn’t hang our heads when we got down. We kept battling. It was one of those things, we didn’t play perfect, we didn’t shoot it great, but our kids kept competing.

“For me, that was our game plan going in — just compete and play possessions.”

Westview had key contributions off the bench from Jenkins (10 points) and Jacob Epstein (eight points), but the game turned on two crucial shots — Russell’s 3-pointer to close out the third quarter to give the Wildcats a 41-37 lead and Kefgen’s game-winner.

“I’m blessed to have a team that has confidence in me to pull shots at the end of the game,” said Kefgen, the 6-foot-3 senior who signed with Oregon Tech in November. “When I’m missing, they keep telling me to shoot it, so … I think just the confidence that my team has in me allows me to make shots like that.”

OK, but after so many missed the mark Tuesday, how much of a relief was it to see one go through the net?

“It was amazing,” said Kefgen, who finished with nine points. “When you don’t hit one the whole game and you hit one to put your team up one with a minute left, I don’t think there’s any better feeling.”

And it wasn’t just his teammates who told him to keep shooting. His coach was right there, too.

“With about four minutes left, I’d pulled him aside and I said, ‘You make the next one, you’re not going to think about the last five,’” Wolf said. “I was just really proud of him to put all that behind him and make a big shot.”

Southridge’s Nikko Kalish missed the game with flu-like symptoms, leaving the Skyhawks without a key starter who had been playing some of his best basketball over the past two weeks.

“It hurt us not having that extra player,” Vesel said. “We had to play some guys who haven’t been playing a ton and Westview is a team where you’ve got grind and it’s physical.

“The very first play of the game, we had a guy run through a screen and just send one of our guys to the floor. The officials watched that happened and that was the tone of the game — it was going to be a real physical game. And that wears you out. Westview has better depth than we do and with another player out, I thought fatigue played a little bit of a role down the stretch. I felt like we were a little bit tired there the second half.”

Still, the Skyhawks had a chance coming out of a timeout with 1.9 seconds left and chance to inbound the ball in the front court and from in front of their own bench. The plan was to lob the ball toward to basket to the 6-7 Hoff, who would either score off the catch or get fouled.

Neither of those happened, though, because the pass wasn’t high enough and the 6-1 Jenkins got to it before Huff.

“We were trying to get a play at the rim if we felt like we had an advantage, and it looked like Alonzo had a step on that kid,” Vesel said. “As a matter of fact, Nikko, the starter who’s out sick, is our inbounder, so we had a guy that hadn’t really run that spot as our inbounder and he didn’t quite get the ball up high enough and it got tipped away.

“Obviously, it puts Westview in the driver seat for a league title. With the senior-dominant crew that they have, it’s going to be hard to catch ‘em. I don’t know if anyone else can put an ‘L’ on them and we don’t get a chance to chase ‘em anymore since they got us both times.”

Westview still has some work to do, but with one road game against last-place Aloha and home games against Beaverton, Jesuit and Sunset still to play, the Wildcats appear to have a lock on their first outright league championship.

“That was a big win and a big step toward a league title,” said Russell, the Wildcats’ senior point guard. “Southridge is a good team. They’re one of the top teams in the state for a reason. They won Metro last year so, hey, if you want to take it from ‘em, you’ve got to win at their house.

“It was really all about our defense. We weren’t hitting shots, but our defense won us the game and some late-game, big shots. That’s all that matters.”