TUMWATER — When the Adna Pirates were announced as the No. 9 seed in the 2B State Tournament, it would have been easy for them to feel slighted.
At 21-4, the Pirates had a case to be a top-8 team, which would have had them playing for a bye in Spokane. Instead, as the No. 9 team, they needed a win to even clinch their spot there.
For coach Luke Salme and his group, it wasn’t about that heading into their Opening Round matchup against No. 16 Warden on Friday night.
“It was just, come out and play our best basketball game of the year,” Salme said. “I can confidently say that was our best 32 minutes of basketball all season.”
Adna led wire-to-wire in a blowout victory, stamping their spot in Spokane in emphatic fashion with a 92-47 win at Tumwater High School.
The Pirates are headed to Spokane Arena for the third year in a row and for the fourth time in the last five years.
“I’m extremely pumped,” Grayson Humphrey said. “That’s been a goal since the start of the season, and it’s amazing to achieve that.”
Humphrey opened the scoring on Adna’s first possession with a layup inside, an early indication of the Pirates’ offensive gameplan.
Adna had the size advantage, and it relentlessly attacked the paint and scored with ease inside. By the end of the first quarter, the Pirates had already built a 27-9 lead.
“It’s not a secret, we’re not very big,” Salme said. “So when another team has a rim protector, we can struggle and settle. We knew this team had a little bit of length, but not a rim protector, so we talked about being the aggressors. Let’s be the aggressors and get it through them. And we did that.”
Humphrey was hitting from outside as well, hitting three three-pointers in the first half, and he finished the first half with 21 points. He went on to finish with a game-high 26 points, and he was quick to give credit to the other four on the floor postgame.
“The other offensive guys on my team make it really easy to score,” Humphrey said. “It’s really easy to work off them.”
Trevin Salme scored 14 points in the first half, and he added 11 in the second half to finish with 25, giving him and Humphrey a combined 51. Trevin Salme added eight assists, seven rebounds, and four assists, and Humphrey also nabbed four steals.
“That’s what we want them to do in this game,” Luke Salme said. “It’s fun as a guy who has coached them in hundreds of hundreds of games since first grade to just sit back and enjoy it a little bit. It’s pretty fun, and I’m pumped for them.”
Landen Cline added 15 points, Jackson Knittle added nine to go along with three rebounds, and James Greenwood scored six. Trent Kephart scored three, while Kannen Kephart, Lucas Fehrenbach, Kaden Ricahrdson, and Talan Guerrero added two apiece.
If not for the running clock, the Pirates likely would have broken the 100-point mark, but it was still plenty enough to finish with a season-high in points.
“The ball was going in,” Humphrey said. “That makes everything better, and it makes everything easier. We were playing for each other, and it was just an amazing feeling.”
Now at 22-4, the Pirates will head to Spokane on Tuesday before facing No. 8 Liberty Bell in the Round of 12 on Wednesday at 9 p.m. It’s a rematch of the 2025 Round of 12, when the then tenth-seeded Mountain Lions upset the then seventh-seeded Pirates by 20.
“We were really frustrated with how we played there last year,” Luke Salme said. “Getting another chance at those guys, it’s like the stars are aligned. They’re tougher than crap, and they’re scrappy, but having another chance to kind of right a wrong from last year is all we can ask for.”
