Magic goes ‘poof’

SEATTLE – The clock on North Central’s Cinderfella story that for two days captured everyone’s imagination, struck midnight quickly in Friday’s State 3A boys basketball semifinals.

Top-ranked Bainbridge (25-3) scored 15 straight points in the game’s first 5 minutes en route to a 55-40 victory.

While the early dose of reality brought a sudden end to NC’s “impossible dream,” nothing could diminish the back story of the rags-to-riches season or dampen the enthusiasm of the small-but-noisy pink-clad fans during which the Greater Spokane League’s last-place team earned for its school a second straight state trophy and ninth in as many trips to state.

“It’s just been an incredible three weeks,” said coach Jay Webber. “To get to state was huge and the way we opened and yesterday’s (win) … I wouldn’t have believed it three weeks ago.”

At 5 p.m. today, NC plays Southridge to see which team places third in state and which is sixth. The Suns went scoreless in the final 11 minutes, 29 seconds of the first semifinal game during a 60-35 loss to deliberate and nearly mistake-free O’Dea.

Bainbridge and O’Dea (24-5) meet for the fourth time this year for the 3A title. Bainbridge has won the previous three.

NC (10-18), a Seattle darling for its “how did they get here and reach the semifinals?” story, could not penetrate the Spartans’ sizeable interior defense that featured 6-foot-9 Coby Gibler, nor hit from outside as an antidote. They found themselves quickly in the 15-0 hole.

Gonzaga University-bound guard Steven Gray had six of the points and Gibler four more before the Indians’ Justin Anderson made a free throw with 2:29 remaining in the first quarter.

Faced with that deficit, the rims got bigger for the Spartans, who scored at will, including three 3-pointers, and tighter for the Indians, who shot only 2 for 23 in the half. They trailed 31-10 by then as Gray and Gibler finished with eight points apiece.

“We struggled at the beginning of the game and it just kept going,” said Nick Rijon, who led the Indians with 15 points and shared the rebounding lead with Anderson with seven apiece.

“They’re a really good team,” Rijon continued. “They play defense well, they passed the ball well, they shot well. We couldn’t get our passes where we wanted and their size rattled us. It was frustrating.”

Things didn’t get any better in the second half until Bainbridge sat its starters in the third quarter. Gray had 16 points and the burly Gibler, who has drawn interest from Eastern Washington, added 12 by then. Guard Caleb Davis, a 6.3-point-per-game scorer during the season, had three 3-pointers for 10 more points.

With the deficit at 31 points and the Spartans starters sitting, Rijon, Anderson and Javier Grigsby amassed most of their combined 29 points and NC cut the deficit to 54-40 with 2:03 left. The starters returned for Bainbridge just in case.

“You have to hand it to NC,” said Bainbridge coach Scott Orness. “They fought hard and we had no choice but to put the starters back in and seal the deal.”

Webber said the semifinal loss was a microcosm of the season. If the team started slowly, he said, it never got in sync, if it started fast, things went well.

Today, the Indians have a chance to finish a couple of places higher than last year, although Webber knows they’ll have their hands full against another physical team in the Suns.

“We’ll try to bounce back and see if we can come up with some more magic,” he said. “It would be an awesome way to end it.”