Ninth-grader hits Grade A shot

Freshmen basketball players have already been a staple at the banquet table of Greater Spokane League basketball.

But the piece de resistance so far has been Shadle Park frosh Zack Humphrey, whose three-quarters court shot defeated Mead 43-40 on Monday.

“There was .6 second left in the game,” said Shadle coach Tim Gaebe. “Mead had the ball out of bounds below our free-throw line on the sideline. They go deep and Zack picks it off on the same sideline (left of Shadle’s basket) near the free-throw line at the other end.”

Humphrey stayed vertical, and in one motion threw the ball as he came down.

“It hit nothing but the bottom of the net,” Gaebe said.

That Humphrey is so precocious should come as no surprise. His grandfather Denny is Cheney’s retired Hall of Fame coach. His dad, Jay, was a player at Ritzville in his day, served as head coach at both North Central and University, and is currently Gaebe’s assistant at Shadle.

Humphrey is part of a gifted freshman class that battled through years of AAU basketball and is already making its presence felt in the GSL. Humphrey is nearly averaging double figures for the Highlanders.

On Monday, Central Valley freshman Luke Clift hit clutch shots and free throws to finish with his third double-figure performance of the year. Lanky 6-foot-5 Mead freshman Brendan Ingebritsen has shown flashes of brilliance, including a 16-point game against Ferris.

But the long buzzer-beater by Humphrey has been the capper. Gaebe said he has seen similar shots by Humphrey.

“I’ve hit a couple of shots at the buzzer before the end of a quarter or half, I guess,” Humphrey said. “Sometimes at practice I’ll take halfcourt shots, but none from that far.”

Humphrey said he used his football defensive back skills to go up, intercept the basketball and throw it.

“It looks pretty good,” Humphrey said he felt at the time. “I turned to the ref and he said it was and we started the celebration.”

The youngster said he considers it an honor to play varsity basketball so young and admitted he’s still adjusting to a game that is considerably faster than AAU ball.

As close as GSL teams appear to be at the end of preseason, who knows? A couple of more buzzer-beaters could get Shadle into postseason.

“That’s all I’ve got to do,” Humphrey said. “I might. You never know. But I doubt it.”