TUMWATER — It was a play that has been run, to potentially not an overexaggeration by Jeff Gallagher, “700 times.”
The Black Hills High School boys basketball team has lived and died by the perimeter shooting of the Morrill twins, James Morgan and Peyton Faught. It is one of the primary reasons why the Evergreen Conference regular season title resides in South Thurston County.
So in the closing seconds Saturday night, the Wolves ran one of their bread and butter plays for a potential game-tying 3-pointer.
Like the comeback in the final eight minutes, the shot came up just a bit short.
Faught’s corner trifecta missed the mark and Ridgefield’s Jack Hughes sunk the two free throws that put a 54-49 triumph on ice in the Class 2A District 4 quarterfinals in Tumwater.
“I was proud of how they battled,” Gallagher said. “As coaches, you (have) to guard against. If the kids can feel it, you try to stay positive. At the end of the day, they’re a very good basketball team. We still have an opportunity to get where we want to be.”
The Spudders’ victory makes it an all-GSHL semi with them facing Mark Morris and the other half being R.A. Long versus Columbia River. They were the fourth seed out of the league and waltzed into the gym housed by the top seed from the EvCo.
Ridgefield walked out with a squeaker and some jubilation once the final buzzer rang.
“Great team win,” Spudders head coach Jason Buffum said. “This was going to be a pretty even matchup.”
Black Hills (14-7) limited Ridgefield to six fourth quarter points and began the comeback with a 5-0 spurt to cut a 10-point deficit in half. Quinton Morrill buried a jumper, then Talon Morrill went coast-to-coast on a steal to make it a 52-49 contest.
The Wolves forced an empty possession and had less than 30 seconds for a game-tying bucket. Gallagher didn’t call a timeout.
Faught was open in the corner. It was the player the Wolves wanted in the biggest moment of the night. After the miss, when Hughes was at the free throw line, senior Jaxsen Beck consoled Faught on the bench.
“We executed well, the shot just didn’t go in,” Gallagher said. “Every time he steps across half-court, he thinks he’s going to knock down a shot. It’s just basketball; you make some shots, you miss some shots.”
Two moments shifted the tide of the affair.
At one point going roughly three-plus minutes without a point, the Wolves fell into playing isolation ball and coughed up five turnovers in the frame. The Spudders used that to spark a 9-0 run that was capped by a Drew Krsul trifecta.
Jamison McCann and Hughes – Ridgefield’s top-two scorers – combined for 17 points in the first half. The rest of its players totaled 15.
“We’ve been waiting all year for a couple of those guys to step up,” Buffum said. “The first half was the best team basketball we’ve played.”
Then in the third after a 7-0 spree by Black Hills, McCann converted a 3-point play and buried two triples to make the cushion double figures. Trailing by three was the closest the Wolves were in the final 16 minutes.
Talon Morrill and Morgan finished with 13 points apiece while Quinton Morrill added 12 for Black Hills.
“Every time we got close, they would answer with a big play and that made it tough,” Gallagher said.
While the top half of the bracket is filled with the GSHL, the elimination bracket has three EvCo representatives. And one is a head-to-head, survive-and-advance game.
Black Hills will face W.F. West in an elimination game on Tuesday night on Ron Brown Court at Centralia High School. The Wolves swept the regular season series against the Bearcats, but the margin of both wins were a combined 14 points.
“They’re mentally tough,” Gallagher said of his group. “You got to win two.”
