Taking it to a new level
For most of his high school basketball career, James Cahalan was the master of his role. But for the second half of his senior season at West Valley, he’s moved on to a bigger, even more important role.
From the time he first joined the West Valley varsity the skinny guard with a sweet shot from long range was the Eagles’ sharpshooter off the bench, coming in to provide an important offensive spark by hitting the three-pointer.
“I liked that role,” he said. “Everybody has to have a role on a team, and if I can fill that role and help the team, great. I’m not the best player on the team. I’m just 5-foot-9, so I’m not going to intimidate people. But I love to shoot, and I liked being able to come in and have an impact.
“I concentrate on playing good defense. At West Valley, you don’t have to be really tall or athletic to play. If you can play good defense, you’re going to play.”
And playing for the Eagles has been his ambition for as long as he can remember.
“That’s the kind of kid James is,” coach Jamie Nilles said. “He does whatever it is that we ask him to do. He’s a program kid – he’s been coming to our summer camps for as long as I can remember. He may be a little on the small side, but he’s tough as they come.”
“My mom (Jodee Cahalan) is a teacher at West Valley,” he said. “I started going to basketball camp when I was in the first grade, and I had been going to West Valley home games long before that.
Cahalan was big off the bench in the playoffs a year ago, guiding the Eagles through the regionals to claim a No. 1 seed into the state Class 2A tournament, where the team was eliminated in two games.
“We learned a lot playing at state,” Cahalan said. “We didn’t want to go two-and-out, that’s for sure, but we learned just how important it is to play good, solid defense if you’re going to win at state.”
The Eagles returned virtually intact from last year and again Cahalan found himself in the role of playing instant offense.
Everything changed in mid-December when leading scorer Bryan Peterson abruptly quit the team.
“On the one hand, it was a shock,” Cahalan said. “But he (Peterson) talked to all the seniors beforehand and we’re okay with it. But as a team, that’s a lot to lose in the middle of the season. You lose a guy who can score at any time, who can slash to the basket and make things happen.”
Through the team’s first five games, Peterson had averaged 13 points, including a 20-point effort in the team’s second game, a 52-50 loss to Coeur d’Alene, while the team averaged 55 points per game while earning three wins.
Nilles turned to Cahalan to fill out the starting lineup – moving the senior into an entirely different role.
“Starting is completely different from coming in off the bench,” he said. “As a starter, I have so many more responsibilities, in addition shooting whenever I get an open look.”
Offensively, Cahalan has stepped his game up to a new level.
Coming off the bench for the first five games, the senior averaged 7.5 points per game. Since moving into the starting lineup, he’s averaged just under a dozen points per game while the team has boosted its offensive output by more than five points per game, averaging more than 60 points per game.
“I think it’s made us a better team out of necessity,” Cahalan said. “We’ve all had to take it upon ourselves to pick up the slack. We’ve all had to take our game to the next level if we’re going to succeed, and I think we have. We don’t have one player who can come in and make up for the loss, but we can all make ourselves better.
“I think it’s made us a better team now than we were before.”
The Eagles enter the weekend with an 8-4 record, 4-2 in the Great Northern League, losing by a point to Cheney at home and by three in overtime at Pullman a week ago.
“That game in Pullman was probably the best half James has ever played,” Nilles said. “His first half wasn’t very good at all, and I think he’d be the first to say it wasn’t very good. But he came out in the second half and scored 21 points to bring us back.”
The Eagles trailed the Greyhounds by 15 points at intermission in Pullman. They cut that deficit to just five to start the fourth quarter and finished regulation tied to force overtime.
That third-quarter scoring outburst was powered by Cahalan.
The senior connected on five three-pointers in the second half, four of them in the third quarter, where he scored 18 of the team’s 19 points.
“That was pretty much a dream half,” he said.
West Valley now heads into its final seven games of the regular season, starting with its Scrambled Egg spirit game Friday at Medical Lake.
“That’s turned into a fun game,” Cahalan said. “I don’t think Medical Lake really understood what it was all about last year because they hadn’t had a game like that before. But they’re really getting into it, and it should be a lot of fun.”