St. John-Endicott Shows It Can Win With Little Offense

They’re in the Final Four because they defend. The St. John-Endicott Eagles have waded through two state tournament games defying the fundamental concept.

Put the brown thing in the round thing.

Coach Darrell Miller’s kids do so many other things right that shooting is secondary to their success.

Example: When the pressure was most intense Thursday night in a 46-37 win over the pressing St. George’s Dragons, there was no shortage of SJE players calling for the ball.

Nobody disappeared.

That brought a smile from the bench.

“Three years ago, no one wanted to step up,” said Miller, who has revived a proud Eagles tradition. “Nobody wanted the ball. It was run and hide.”

But after another night of shooting pains, St. JohnEndicott can only wonder when it will regain its touch.

Really, this isn’t a bad-shooting ballclub.

“We shot 46 percent as a team during the season,” Miller said after sweating out the quarterfinals.

The shooting mechanics are in place, but after two games here, the official team sound is clank.

Not to worry, Eagles fans, the doctor is in.

The Eagles have a Shot Doctor in Don Nelson, a 1959 Eastern Washington University grad with impressive connections to Eagles basketball. Nelson says the game changes but shooting never does.

The ball will fall, said Nelson, who learned the shooter’s craft from Jack Friel at Washington State and Red Reese at Eastern.

“We have two boys who’ve been kind of our best shooters - Grant Bafus and Karl Scheuerman - and both are perfectionists,” Nelson said. “When they don’t hit, they start wondering what they’re doing wrong instead of just shooting.

“Shooters shoot, and they don’t stop shooting.”

Nelson, who watched sons Gary and Keith help the Eagles to state championships in ‘78 and ‘80, said you can’t teach shooting touch.

Touch is a gift. But success is “75 percent in your mind.”

“You can make anybody a better shooter,” he said. “You just need the proper mechanics to make that 75 percent work for you.”

The pain will pass

Basketball may be the greatest game in the world, but it’s a long way from the fairest.

Ask the La Conner Braves. In a quarterfinal thriller that went end-to-end, La Conner dropped a 55-51 heartbreaker to the hard-working Curlew Cougars.

The two could play 10 times and you might have a different winner each game.

Curlew caught a huge break with 1:36 left when Daren Nystrom hammered Curlew’s Jeremy Groth in 3-point territory. Groth coolly sank three free throws.

If the Arena’s replay system had been at work, you might have seen Groth looking to the baseline for an outlet under pressure. It looked from the press table as if he were fouled in the act of passing, which doesn’t call for three free ones.

La Conner coach Scott Novak handled the disappointment with class.

“You saw it,”he said. “I feel we didn’t get any breaks. We’ve got to get over it.”

By the numbers

So far, statistics in this tournament have rolled off flawlessly - on time, accurate and available to all.

Credit that to a mom-and-pop operation that’s about to expand.

Brian Scheibner of Orting is one of a dozen family members who compile stats for all Washington state high school basketball tournaments. This year, the Scheibners are branching out.

They’ll be in Anchorage in two weeks to do stats for the Alaska state tournaments.

A 37-year-old who sells home automatic stand-by generators, Scheibner’s name may be familiar. His father, Warren, coached the ‘63 Coulee City team with Mel Cox, who went on to star at Central Washington University.

While Scheibner works this tournament, his brother, Al, handles the class 1A tournament in Tacoma. His brother-in-law, Mike Armstrong, and a nephew, Brandon Scheibner, are doing stats at the 3-A event in Seattle.

They use a Dynasport 600 board capable of putting out a 55 to 60-page report on a game. For $1, fans get a four-page game report that includes full box score, leaders in every statistical category and each team’s shot charts.

Notes

Who’ll you be working for in 15 years? Consider where three of St. George’s Dragons will attend school and you see management potential written all over them. Zach Blume is headed to Duke University. John Witherspoon is going to Harvard. Whit Spencer is on his way to the Air Force Academy. And Jason Ala, a player on last year’s St. George’s second-place team, is in pre-med at Johns Hopkins… . Darrington’s unflappable point guard Ned Miller is the reigning State A/B cross-country champion. When a hip injury kept him off the basketball court over the summer, Miller improvised, agreeing with a home owner to mow the lawn in exchange for pool privileges. Swimming kept him in shape.

, DataTimes