GSL Regionals: Ferris, Central Valley boys extend seasons; top-seeded Mead girls rout Lincoln
Trayce Atkins scored 16 points, Ray Ray Bergerson added 13 and 12th-seeded Ferris eliminated 13th-seeded Arlington 64-45 in a boys 3A state regional at Central Valley HS.
The Saxons (17-5) face fourth-seeded Rainier Beach in a first-round loser-out on Wednesday at 12:15 at Tacoma Dome.
“We don’t make it easy on ourselves, Ferris coach Sean Mallon said. “But you know, there’s something to be said for us when our backs are kind of against the wall. When we’re trapped in a corner, we fight our way out and that’s kind of who we are.”
“We’re going to state, that’s all that matters. We’re in the dome,” Ferris guard AJ Newcomb said. “That’s was our goal the whole time. So it didn’t matter how we got here. We’re just there.”
Newcomb hassled Arlington (17-6) leading scorer Ethan Martin into early foul trouble, and the Eagles’ guard finished with nine points before fouling out.
“We bought in a new defense and they just couldn’t get anything off of it,” Newcomb said. “And it worked exactly how we wanted. We got stops, easy transition buckets, and that’s exactly what we were going for the whole game.”
“AJ Newcomb is like the heart and soul of this deal, man,” Mallon said. “He really is. The fact that that kid didn’t make the all-league team is an absolute crime. I mean it. It really is his defense. He plays every single night. He’s a basketball player’s basketball player. He competes at everything he does, and he’s a guy for us that we just don’t want to take for granted.”
Ferris trailed 11-4 early and Mallon asked for a timeout.
“We knew that if we let them come down and run halfcourt offense, it was gonna be a long night,” he said. “Those guys have been playing basketball together since the third grade and it shows. So we just told them to kind of regroup a little bit and kind of get back on track.”
Patrick Murphy drew the Saxons even at 17 early in the second, then Atkins hit a corner 3 for their first lead. Ferris used a 19-4 run to lead by 12 at halftime.
Ferris led 45-30 entering the fourth, but Arlington used an 8-2 run at the start of the quarter to get it back to single-digits. Bergerson and Dylan Skaife nailed consecutive corner 3s to restore a 15-point lead.
Central Valley 69, Woodinville 66: Record-breaking scorer Dylan Darling’s 3-point shot really wasn’t falling. So he did things the old-fashioned way.
Darling scored 48 points, mostly on a dizzying array of spins, twists and bursts of acceleration in the paint, and the Bears (18-7) outlasted the Falcons (14-9) in overtime in a boys 4A regional at University HS.
Central Valley faces fourth-seeded Kamiakin in a first-round loser-out on Wednesday at 7:15 p.m. at the Tacoma Dome.
CV trailed by 12 in the second quarter before Darling took over. He scored 29 of his team’s 31 points in the second and third quarters. He made just two 3-pointers in the game and hit 12 of 18 at the line.
“That was crazy,” Darling said. “That was so much fun. So much fun.”
“I think what people don’t recognize about (Darling) is just his competitive spirit,” Central Valley acting coach Geoff Arte said. “Like, he wasn’t gonna let us lose that game.”
With the Falcons hounding Darling with three defenders in the extra period, two nonstarters made the difference. Darling found Kyelan Breesnee for an open 3 and Jon Heone followed with a short jumper to make it 68-63 with 41.9 seconds to go.
“They were just doing such a good job of keying in on Darling,” Arte said. “He makes the right play and (Darling) knew they were coming open and so he threw it to his buddies and they made some big shots down there at the end.”
“They were everything,” Darling said of his teammates. “Without them we weren’t in there. We started off slow but it’s about how you finish and that was that was a good game.”
Woodinville’s Akhil Damadi hit a 3 to get it back to two, but Darling hit 1 of 2 at the line, then forced a bad shot at the other end to let time expire.
“I’m just trying to do anything to keep the team in it,” Darling said. “Now it’s just score points and stay positive and we pulled through.”
Mount Si 69, Gonzaga Prep 56: Bennett O’Connor scored 21 points and the Wildcats (23-0) topped the Bullpups (14-8) in a 4A regional at Bellevue College. Jayden Stevens had 21 points for G-Prep, which faces a first-round loser-out game against ninth-seeded Federal Way on Wednesday at 9 p.m. at the Tacoma Dome.
Pullman 61, Tumwater 50: Jaedyn Brown scored 27 points, including 8 of 8 at the line in the fourth quarter, and the fourth-seeded Greyhounds (21-2) beat the fifth-seeded Thunderbirds (19-5) at University HS. Pullman advances to a quarterfinal on Thursday at 3:45 p.m. at the Yakima Valley SunDome.
Girls
Mead 76, Lincoln 30: Teryn Garnder had 19 points, all in the first half, and the top-seeded Panthers (23-0) beat the eighth-seeded Abes (17-3) in a 3A regional at Central Valley HS.
“We play hard, right?” Mead coach Quantae Anderson said. “Everyone knows when they’re gonna play against us, we’re gonna play as hard as we can for as long as we can. And we’re not worried about what people think.”
Mead outscored Lincoln 32-3 in the second quarter.
“We made the first one and the basket just got huge,” senior Olivia Moore said. “I feel like every shot that was going up was going in, for sure.”
“It felt like everything was going in (in the second quarter),” Anderson said. “But what happened, we got a lot of a lot of buckets in transition, and we were able to kick the ball out to open shooters after we started penetrating.”
Natalie Braun and Haley Burns added 11 points apiece for the Panthers. Mead advances to a quarterfinal on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at the Tacoma Dome.
“We just kind of got to come out and play our game, no matter who we’re playing,” Moore said.
West Valley 68, North Kitsap 33: Chloe DeHaro scored 16 points and the ninth-seeded Eagles (20-2) beat the 16th-seeded Vikings (15-7) in a 2A regional at Central Valley HS. West Valley advances to a first-round loser-out against No. 1-seeded Tumwater on Wednesday at 2 p.m. at the Yakima Valley SunDome.