FOREST GROVE — The Cascade Cougars are playing some of their best basketball of the season at just the right time — in the state tournament.
The question is: Can the top-ranked Cougars keep it up over the next two days?
Cascade’s Landon Knox scored a game-high 23 points and Kaiden Ford had 19 points and eight rebounds, leading the Cougars to a 56-34 victory over the Seaside Seagulls in the OSAA/OnPoint Community Credit Union 4A boys basketball quarterfinals at Forest Grove High School.
Hunter Anundi and Ethan Medyanik added five points each to help set up a showdown between the Cougars (21-5) and the defending state-champion Baker Bulldogs, a 54-48 winner over Crook County in one of Thursday’s other quarterfinals.
“First game at state, no matter what seed you are or where you are, it’s always a scary game,” Knox said. “You want to get into that winners’ bracket andnot in that breakfast bracket, playing at 9 a.m. So, it was huge to be able to pull out a game and get into a rhythm.
“I feel like this tournament is all about rhythm. The team that’s in the best rhythm and that is playing together is going to go the farthest. So, this was a really good game for us to get into a rhythm to kick us off in this tournament.”
Seaside had a bit of a size advantage against Cascade and the eighth-seeded Seagulls had some success inside early with Barett Blodgett and Austin Palmer scoring under the basket to take a 9-3 lead.
Then Seaside’s scoring opportunities near the basket started to dry up. And it wasn’t because the Seagulls stopped looking to get the ball down low. It was just that Cascade defense packed the paint and started getting their hands on everything, disrupting the flow that Seaside had to start the game.
The game started to turn late in the first quarter when Cascade used a 9-3 run that tied the game at 12-12.
Then in the second quarter, it was almost all Cougars.
Cascade held Seaside without a field goal in the period and outscored the Seagulls 11-1 to take a 23-12 halftime lead. Knox had six points for Cascade in the quarter and Medyanik had the other five, but it was the Cougars’ defense that stole the spotlight, holding Seaside scoreless over the final seven minutes of the half.
“Defense wins championships, so that’s all we’ve been talking about,” Knox said. “That first quarter, there were a lot of nerves. You get those nerves out when it’s 12-12 and then going into the second quarter we were like, ‘Alright, let’s settle down, let’s get in a stance, and let’s defend these dudes.’
“And our guys did tremendous tonight.”
Seaside came up empty on 10 of 11 possessions in the second quarter, going 0 for 7 from the field and 1 for 4 from the free throw line. Five of the Seagulls’ possessions ended with turnovers, including two that were kept alive with offensive rebounds.
It was just a bad quarter all the way around for the Cowapa League champions.
“That second quarter, we got out of sync offensivly,” Seaside coach Bill Westerholm said. “We weren’t reversing the ball and we got down 10 and because of that we had to extend ourselves in the second half.
“It’s pretty tough to extend yourselves in the full court when you’ve got two really good players on the other team that can get baseline to baseline in a hurry.”
Two really good kids? That would be Knox, the Oregon West Conference player of the year, and Ford, another first-team, all-league selection.
Ford had nine points in the third quarter when the Cougars extended their lead to 39-19. Seaside didn’t put up much of a fight after that.
“Those two kids hit shots when they needed to hit shots and controlled the game,” Westerholm said. “We played hard defensively and held them to 56 points. Our goal was to hold them to 40-45, but offensively we just didn’t get ourselves in position to get set defensively.”
Cascade shot 36.4 percent (16 for 44) from the field, 38.9 percent (7 for 18) from three-point range, and 89.5 percent (17 for 19) at the free-throw line. The Cougars also had a 40-28 advantage in rebounds and had 13 turnovers to Seaside’s 12.
Palmer led Seaside with 13 points, four rebounds, and three assists, while Blodgett added nine points and three rebounds. The Seagulls shot 26.5 percent (13 for 49) from the field, 12.0 percent (3 for 25) from beyond the arc, and 41.7 percent (5 for 12) at the foul line.
“When Seaside built an early six-point lead, we gave up four second-chance opportunities,” Cascade coach BJ Dobrkovsky said. “. It wasn’t the initial post up putting it in. It was more the second chance.
“Once we started hitting somebody and boxing out, then the game changed. They stopped getting second-chance opportunities and then sometimes when you start to make shots, too, that obviously helps your energy level at times.”
And what about that second-quarter defense?
Said Dobrkovsky: “You reach this point and you hold a team that has earned the right to be here without a field goal for an entire quarter … that says a lot about these guys and what they’ve bought into in terms of our system and the way we want to play.”
Cascade, seeking its third title in four seasons, now faces Baker, the team that smoked the Cougars 74-54 in last year’s semifinal.
‘I think this is where this group wants to be,” Dobrkovsky said. “You try to celebrate this one, but it’s such a quick turnaround that we’ll celebrate while we watch and when that smoke clears we’ll know we’ve got to go to work and get ourselves prepared in a short amount of time to play.”
Knox agreed.
‘Every game from here on out is the biggest game of the season, so that’s the biggest game of the season for us,” Knox said. “Congrats, we won a game. But we can’t go celebrating. We got to lock in, get focused, get some good rest, and get ready to play either Baker or Crook County. Both of them are really good teams, so we’ve got to get ready for that.”
No. 5 Baker 54, No. 4 Crook County 48: Isaiah Jones scored a game-high 24 points including the go-ahead basket with 1:48 remaining as the defending state-champion Bulldogs rallied from an eight-point defcit early in the fourth quarter to down the Cowboys.
Crook County’s Jace Jonas knocked down a three-pointer from the left corner to give the Cowboys a 42-34 lead with 7:35 to play in the fourth quarter, but it didn’t last.
Baker mounted a 15-6 run that ended with Jones getting inside and scoring over Crook County’s 6-foot-8 Bryce Lowenbach to give the Bulldogs a 49-48 lead.
After Crook County missed twice for the field and was called for a shot clock violation, Baker’s Jaxon Logsdon banked home a driving layup with 32 seconds left that made it 51-48 with 32 seconds left.
Two free throws by Jones and another by Eli Long closed out the scoring for Baker (17-8).
“At the end of the third quarter, we were just like, ‘We’re not going down without a fight,’” Jones said. “We just did the best that we could, worked as hard as we could, and it paid off. We were able to pull away at the end.
“Everyone came together and it worked. Definitely a team effort. Crook County’s big in the middle (Lowenbach), he beat us up, but we figured out a way to contain him when we had to and we pulled ahead.”
Lowenbach led Crook County with 23 pints, 10 rebounds, and six blocked shots. Jonas added 14 points and was the only other player in double figures for the Tri-Valley Conference-champion Cowboys (19-7).
No. 14 Mazama 58, No. 11 Scappoose 52: Kai Hunt knocked down the go-ahead three-pointer with 2:02 remaining, snapping a 48-48 tie and sparking a 10-1 run that lifted the Vikings over the Indians and into Friday’s semifinals.
Jordan Beals led Mazama with 16 points, Hunt had 15 points and eight rebounds, and Gabe Nanni added 13 points and eight rebounds, putting the Vikings (15-11) one win away from reaching the finals for the first time.
Scappoose’s Elijah Greenan-Biggs scored a team-high 18 points and Evan Barham had 13 points for the Indians (16-10).
No. 2 Marshfield 64, No. 7 Phoenix 41: Steel Carpenter made six three-pointers and finished with a game-high 26 points as the Pirates of the Sky-Em League ran away from the Pirates of the Skyline Conference in Thursday’s final semifinal of the day.
Luke Jackson had 19 points and 10 rebounds, and Jackson Ainsworth added 14 points to help lift Marshfield (22-3) in Friday’s semifinal against Mazama.
Tobias Akpan had a team-high 18 points to lead Phoenix (17-8).
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