MCMINNVILLE – Ninth-seeded La Salle Prep never trailed and took advantage of a cold-shooting game from Caldera to topple the top-ranked Wolfpack, 53-31, in a Thursday afternoon quarterfinal at the OSAA / OnPoint Community Credit Union 5A Boys State Basketball Championships conducted at Linfield University.
La Salle Prep (19-8) flashed the quickness from its guard trio early in the first quarter that would define this game,. The Falcons scored two early layups on coast-to-coast layups from Rigdhen Khyungra and Paul Skoro to set the tone on what would be a long night of chasing that speed for Caldera.
LSP also did a terrific job of getting hands in the passing lane, which created steals and fast break opportunities and limited Caldera possessions.
“That’s what we work on every day,” said senior guard Vance Sheffield. “We just have to get out and go. We’re fast, we’re scrappy. We’re always going to bring it to you.”
Even when Caldera (18-8) could run offense, the Wolfpack struggled both from the outside and to get the ball in deep to their 6-9 senior post Will Jenson. The result was a 16-9 first-quarter lead for La Salle Prep that grew to double digits in the second quarter.
“Legitimately they have the No. 1 interior presence,” said LSP coach Sean Kelly. “Once he catches it he’s really good. The plan was not to let him catch it.”
Jenson scored a team-high eight points in the first half for Caldera but he only attempted five shots.
“I knew if we could limit [Jenson’s] touches…every time he touches it they do good things, because he attracts so much attention...if we could not let him control the tempo of the game I thought we could hold them down.”
With La Salle leading by nine just before halftime, the Falcons got an additional jolt of momentum when Sheffield not only made a 65-foot shot at the buzzer, he PURED it.
“I work on it at the end of every practice and it just happened to go in,” Sheffield said. “It was just luck. That was just a boost, a little boost that we needed and after that it was just us.”
Kelly said that Sheffield, an All-American soccer player set to play Division I next year, is used to big moments.
“He never shies away from them,” Kelly explained. “That helped us with momentum into the second half and propelled us.”
If Caldera was going to get back into the game, it needed a fast start to the second half. Instead, the opposite happened. La Salle opened the half with nine straight points in the paint – really, just more of the same from the first half – as the Falcon lead eclipsed 20 points. LSP’s advantage grew to 41-18 after back-to-back layups from Aidan Kelly and Sheffield, a margin that might prove insurmountable against a hot-shooting team but was absolutely dispositive against a team whose starting guards went a combined 3-for-20 from the field.
“They’re good shooters,” Kelly said. “Really good shooters. I did not expect [Jack Bents, Miles Macomber and Seb Fievet] to shoot like that. We were both just a little bit nervous and, in the end, we won out by making more layups.”
Jenson led Caldera with 15 points and 12 rebounds but he was only able to get off eight shots all game, due, in part, to 26 turnovers forced by La Salle’s quickness and pressure. No other player scored more than six. Take away Jenson’s 5-for-8 and the rest of the team shot just 17 percent from the field.
La Salle Prep wasn’t so great from the perimeter, either. The Falcons finished below 40 percent from the floor for the game, which is hard to do because they made so many layups. Kelly said that his squad usually is good on the perimeter, but could not find the range this afternoon.
“In shootaround this morning we shot so well and we shot well all this week,” Kelly said. “I thought, ‘If we can make outside shots I like our chances,’ but that wasn’t happening. So we had to open it up for our guards and they did the job, like they always do.”
Skoro finished with a game-high 18 points, plus eight rebounds, four assists and four steals. Khyungra, who is quicker than quick, added 16 points and three steals. Sheffield contributed 11 points, six assists and six steals. Kelly, who battled foul trouble much of the game, chipped in with eight points and a team-high nine rebounds.
In other Thursday boys quarterfinals…
No. 4 Wilsonville 64, No. 5 West Albany 54
Wilsonville won a hard-fought, well-played high school basketball game between two teams that distinguished themselves on Thursday afternoon. The Wildcats, who have played in every 5A championship game since 2015, were the superior team in the fourth quarter, turning a nail-biting three-point lead after three into a 10-point win thanks to a 20-9 closing run.
The first half was a tale of two quarters. West Albany, which took fourth at State last year, never trailed in the first quarter and used superior ball movement and balanced offense to earn a 17-11 lead.
Wilsonville was the better team in the second. Sharing led to easy buckets for the Cats. Sparked by an 11-0 run, which included four layups, all assisted, and a triple from Jett Bruce; Wilsonville seized a four-point lead, 26-22, at the halftime break, reversing what had been a seven-point deficit.
The third quarter belonged to both teams. There were six lead changes in an entertaining quarter in which each team’s best player – Gavin Aguilar for West Albany and Cole Hammack for Wilsonville – put on a show. Aguilar scored seven and collected an assist and Hammack, who had eight points to lead Wilsonville in the first half, turned into a distributor extraordinaire with four third-quarter assists to help the Wildcats parry every West Albany thrust.
The final period started much like the entirety of the third. When Aguilar fed Tyson Walker for a layup, West Albany had seized the lead once more, 45-44, with just five minutes to play.
The Bulldogs enjoyed that lead for 17 seconds. Emmitt Fee fed Bruce for his third triple of the game to put Wilsonville on top for good. Drake Devin, who battled foul trouble much of the game, followed with a more convention “and-1” three-point play to make the lead a more comfortable five.
West Albany closed to within 50-48 on a wing three pointer from Jonah Lasselle out of a time out, but Wilsonville countered with an 8-0 run, including a Devin bucket that put Hammack in double digits with 10 assists, and West Albany was not able to get closer than six the rest of the way.
Hammack finished with 16 points, those 10 assists and four boards to lead the way for Wilsonville (24-3). Bruce scored a game-high 19 points and Fee had eight points and 11 rebounds. All Wilsonville starters scored at least eight points.
West Albany (20-7) put four of its starters in double digits, with Aguilar, Lasselle, Owen Hopkins and Grey Nieman combining for 48 of the team’s 54 points. Walker had the other six and a team-high eight rebounds.
No. 14 Canby 61, No. 6 Crescent Valley 39
Canby became the third team from the Northwest Oregon Conference into the semifinals after an impressive wire-to-wire win over higher-seeded Crescent Valley on Thursday evening.
Jaxon Lawson had 18 points, including five from long range; and was particularly lethal in the first half, when the Cougars were building a 29-16 lead after 16 minutes.
Lawson shared the spotlight in the third quarter with sophomore Cooper Cousin, who had two three pointers, a floater that completed a scintillating sequence where both he and Lawson made ridiculous saves to keep the ball from being turned over; and an assist over a two and one-half minute span. Canby’s lead was 15 when Cousin came alive. The Cougars were up 23 at its conclusion and the game was essentially over.
Crescent Valley, which entered the game with a 20-5 record on the year, didn’t have any sustained success the entire game, save for a 6-0 run early in the fourth quarter when down by 25 and at risk of being subject to a running clock.
The Raiders struggled significantly in the first half, when the game still hung in the balance. Other than Truman Brasfield’s two-handed monster jam in the second quarter, there were few other highlights for Crescent Valley. The sixth seeds shot just 32 percent from the field and turned the ball over eight times. They were within touch, down just five late in the first quarter, when Lawson’s second three-ball of four in the first half sparked an 18-5 run that extended to the halftime buzzer.
Brasfield and junior reserve Jefferson Sand scored 10 points each to lead Crescent Valley, which shot just 34 percent from the field for the game and only 18 percent from three-point land. The Raiders also were outrebounded, 32-26.
Lawson added seven rebounds and four assists to his scoring total. Cohen Vandecoevering had 13 points. Jack Brauckmiller recorded six blocked shots. Cousin finished with 10. In a lot of ways, this game was a carbon copy of Saturday’s win at No. 3 Redmond, where the Cougars (17-10) also led from the start and put the game away early.
No. 7 Summit 54, No. 2 Thurston 46
Defending champion Summit held off second-seeded Thurston in the nightcap to reach the semifinals for the fourth consecutive year.
Only this year was different. The Storm team that won Thursday night consisted primarily of JV swing players from last year who performed scout team duties for the standouts who brought home the title. With this their year to shine, Summit, with a new head coach to boot, was eager to prove that it still had what it took to contend for a title.
Mission accomplished.
Barely.
Ryder Grieb had seven points and Kai Scalley added five for Summit, which used a 10-0 run to break a 4-4 first-quarter tie and assume control, up 16-6, after one period.
The Storm extended their lead to 20 at halftime against a Thurston team that shot 23 percent from the field in the first half, including 0-for-9 from three-point land. Buckets were hard to come by for Summit, too, but the tandem of Grieb and Scalley, supplemented by strong free throw shooting from Rowan Blossey, did enough to have Summit in command with 16 minutes to play.
Thurston came out extending its pressure defense to start the third quarter and it worked. The Colts turned Summit over with regularity and Noah Blair started to heat up. The team’s star quarterback scored 11 in the period against a suddenly-unsure Summit team. Thurston was able to get the lead down to 10 before four late Summit points, on two free throw and a set play off of an inbounds pass, made it 44-30 Storm after three.
Thurston was relentless in the fourth quarter. Selling out on defense and crashing the glass relentlessly on the offensive end, the Colts gave their faithful hope when Nate Stiffler was fouled shooting a triple and made all three free throws to get Thurston within 49-46 with 23.6 ticks remaining. The Colts could get no closer, however. Summit (19-8) scored the last five points from the line to finalize its upset win.
Blair finished with 17 points to lead the second-seeded Colts, who lost for only the fourth time this year. Lucas LaBounty added 10.
Scalley led three Summit players in double figures with 15. Grieb added 14 and 10 rebounds. Blossey finished with 10, including a perfect 6-for-6 from the charity stripe.
johnt@osaa.org
Subscribe
