1/13/17

Centralia 67, WF West 54  Link to Aaron Van Tuyl’s story on the Lewis County Sports Blog

Aberdeen 52, Rochester 42 (Thursday) Link to game story in The Daily World News

Tumwater 53, Black Hills 52

(Tumwater, WA) The Tumwater T-Birds were looking for a win over their crosstown rival that would really give them the early jump on the rest of the Evco 2A and heading into the 4th quarter sporting a 13 point lead it looked like they would cruise to a win.

Before we get to a crazy 4th quarter let’s start with the 1st half. Tumwater was rolling early as Thomas Drayton scored the 1st 4 points. CJ Geathers and Brian Marty picked up the pace each hitting from behind the 3-point line as the T-Birds built a 10-2 lead. The Wolves would then ignite and reel off 8 straight as Garrett Glenn and Noah Brewer led the charge. The T-Birds would react with another run of their own this time 10-straight and would finish the quarter with a 20-10 lead.

Black Hills had to respond in the 2nd quarter or Tumwater could sprint away and put this game away in the 1st half and that’s just what they did cutting their 10-point deficit down to 5. Glenn remained hot hitting 4 3-pointers in the 1st half to lead the Wolves with 12 points as they trailed 32-27 at the half.

Tumwater would re-boot in the 3rd quarter and quickly opened up on the Wolves stretching their lead at one point to as many as 15 points. Thomas Drayton again got things started for Tumwater while Marty would score 4 and Matthew Brown hit a big 3-ball the only 3-point shot for Tumwater in the 2nd half and Geathers added to his total. The T-Birds would dump in 17 3rd quarter points while limiting Black Hills to just 9 and Tumwater stretched the lead to 49-36.

This set up an unbelievable quarter as in less than 90-seconds the Wolves had closed the gap to just 3 points on a 10-0 run. Joe Crumley hit a 3, Noah Brewer had a 3-point play with a lay-in and foul shot and Kae Walker scored 2 shots from the near the free throw line and all of a sudden it was 49-46 T-Birds. It was at this time the Wolves also took a hit when Crumley was called for a 5th foul on a questionable offensive foul call. If the Wolves were going to finish off the comeback upset they would have to do it without their court general.

Without Crumley the Wolves offense did slow down but not their defense as they continued to shut out the T-Birds. Black Hills would finally come all the way back and take their 1st lead of the game at the 2:45 mark when Ethan Loveless scored his only bucket on a tough inside lay-up that just got up enough to roll over the rim and the Wolves led 50-49 and the T-Birds still had not scored 1 point in the 4th.

On the next possession Drayton would work it inside and hit a short shot and the T-Birds had their first points of the 4th quarter and more importantly the lead 51-50. Black Hills’ Kae Walker then looked like he hit the game winning shot after putting a blocked shot right back up and in the bucket to go up 52-51 with 3.8 seconds to play.

After a time-out the T-Birds tried a long throw to mid-court that was slapped out of bounds by the Wolves with 2.3 seconds to play. After Tumwater’s final time-out Marty took the ball out of bounds and threw it in to Drayton who passed it right back to Marty. Marty told us in the post game interview that he intended to pull up for a jump shot but a defender came at him to cut him off so he side stepped and drove the lane floating up a shot that bounced around on the rim and then fell through stunning the upset minded Wolves and flooding the floor with T-Bird fans.

This was Marty’s 2nd buzzer beating game winning shot this season as he hit a half court shot back in December to beat Capital as time ran out. The T-Birds are now 3-0 while the Wolves fall to 1-2. Marty’s game winning shot earned our ProActive Physical Therapy Play of the Game. Tumwater’s CJ Geathers took our Tommy Lowe of Greene Realty Player of the Game while Noah Brewer got our Black Hills Player of the Game.

Scoring

Tumwater: Brian Marty 15, CJ Geathers 14, Thomas Drayton 9, Isaiah Koukal 6, Andrew May 4, Matthew Brown 3, Cade Otton 1

Black Hills: Noah Brewer 14, Joe Crumley 13, Garrett Glenn 12, Kae Walker 8, Nate Kindall 3, Ethan Loveless 2

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