Bright night for Knights
All week long, Sunnyside Christian was the undersized, defense-oriented, large-hearted team grinding its way to wins.
Never was it more evident than the final quarter of the season.
SC shut out Willapa Valley in the fourth quarter Saturday to earn a 46-41 win, and the third State B championship in the school’s history.
“You gotta believe,” SC head coach Dean Wagenaar said. “I really felt good about us. The kids were extremely loose, and I thought the pressure was on them.”
In the fourth quarter, it was the same Knights precision from the previous three games that won them the title.
“Basically all we did all year was we would get the lead and then slow it down,” senior Jordan Haak said. “It took the whole game to get that lead – two points even.”
Six-foot-1 senior guard Andrew Schutt gave the Knights (26-1) the lead for good with 3:03 left when he beat the defense for a layin, got fouled, and converted the free throw for a 43-41 lead. After a missed 3-pointer by Valley, SC ran two minutes off the clock before Valley finally broke down and fouled 6-3 junior guard Chad Den Boer.
Den Boer missed the front end of the one-and-one, but Haak, 6-1 and outhustling everybody on the floor, grabbed the offensive rebound. Ten seconds later, Schutt found Haak breaking alone to the rim on the weakside for a layin with 41 seconds left. Valley had three more shots, but missed them all – part of a 0-for-8 quarter.
“Basketball’s a game of runs,” Valley head coach John Peterson said. “And we picked a bad time to go cold. You know, we turned it over a few times and didn’t get some rebounds. We had some nice looks that didn’t go down, normally we make those, and you do what you can do and you live with the results.”
Valley lost despite a heroic effort from 6-4 junior guard Ryan Freeman. Freeman had 16 of his game-high 18 points in the first half and pulled down six rebounds.
Most of these Knights were in the crowd for the last championship in 2002.
“I was in the first row for that one yelling with most of these guys,” said Den Boer, who led the Knights with 13 points and 10 rebounds. “Back home, we kind of joked after we won districts that we had two more nets to cut down, regionals and state.”
Maybe the most impressive aspect of the fourth quarter is the way the Knights laid it all on the line after four straight days of championship basketball.
“It’s hard to explain,” Schutt said. “We just maintained that energy, and your legs start to go. But you’re playing in the state championship.”
The third quarter saw SC, especially Schutt, come out playing with intensity. Schutt scored the first six points of the second half to put the Knights up 34-29.
Valley answered by finally taking advantage of the height differential inside. Zach Baugher, at 6-11, and Ryan Anderson, at 6-5, the two tallest players on the floor, scored six straight, followed by a fastbreak leaner by Freeman for a 39-37 lead.
Den Boer put the Knights back on top with an impossible fallaway and foul, which he converted into a three-point play. Baugher had the last bucket of the third, a turnaround jumper from the baseline and a 41-40 Valley lead.
Both teams showed little jitters in the first half, as the two teams combined for 10 3-pointers as SC built a 28-27 lead.
“I thought we could do great things here,” Jordan Haak said. “After the first game, when we played pretty good, we started to think about it. We came here playing better than we did all year, and this is the time to play good.”