Peninsula’s record-breaking season ends with loss to Cleveland

The record-breaking 2015-16 season had to come to an end sometime for the Peninsula High boys basketball team. But this wasn’t the time, place or circumstances the Seahawks envisioned at the beginning of the season.

The Seahawks were overwhelmed against a scrappy Cleveland squad on Saturday at Mount Tahoma High School in the regional round of the Class 3A state tournament. The Eagles came out on top, 75-62, in a game in which the Seahawks were never able to get in sync.

Cleveland was led by sophomore C.J. Elleby, who poured in 22 points for the Eagles, 17 of them coming in the first half. While the Seahawks were able to slow Elleby in the second half, it opened up looks for senior guard Davon Bolton, who scored 20 of his 23 points in the second half, almost all off a midrange jumper at the top of the key after a high ball-screen.

The Seahawks were forced into 26 turnovers — with star senior JaQuori McLaughlin committing 12.

“They were just physical,” McLaughlin said. “Grabbing, fouling the whole time. They were double teaming right when I got past half court. So that was difficult. But I’ve just got to find my teammates. Unfortunately, it didn’t go our way today. I never want to have turnovers as a point guard. Going into the Pac-12, I’ve got to get better at that. I just have to keep my head level and be strong with the ball.”

McLaughlin had some things go his way, though. He scored 32 points in the loss. Unfortunately for the Seahawks, no one else on the team scored in double figures.

“They’re a very scrappy team,” Peninsula coach Jake Jackson said. “They have great athleticism, and at the end of the day they just wanted it a little more.”

The teams were tied at 12 at the end of the first quarter, but Peninsula trailed the rest of the game. Peninsula’s zone, which has been practically impenetrable for much of the year, proved ineffective against Elleby and the Eagles in the first half, which forced Jackson into moving to a man-to-man defense in the second half. That wasn’t part of the game plan coming in.

“We went off the script, went to line defense,” Jackson said. “We had to speed up the tempo to get some stops and get the ball back. We did not execute our zone defense on point. C.J. got way too many easy buckets around the high post. It killed us. He had (17) in the first half. It was really hard to stop him. At the end of the day, if our bottom zone defenders aren’t doing their job, it’s tough. We talked about it all week long. They made shots, we didn’t. It was a huge struggle.”

Jackson said his team simply “ran out of fuel.” While he acknowledged Cleveland was the better team on Saturday, he said a flu bug earlier in the week hit his team hard.

“We had to cancel practice on Tuesday,” Jackson said. “We had a huge flu bug — six guys didn’t go to school. I was trying to ignore it but my heart was telling me we battled the first 24 games, and this week, I just knew. I just knew.”

Peninsula ended its season one game away from a trip to the Tacoma Dome.

“It’s really hard to swallow, but I thought we fought as hard as we could as a team,” McLaughlin said. “The stuff we did in the offseason, the practices we had we were really good.”

Jackson said it was tough to come up short two years in a row.

“It’s really tough,” he said. “I thought last year, I felt like we could’ve gone much further. This year, we made it to state — that’s one step further. Twenty-one wins, that’s an all-time school record. I think we set the bar very high. I don’t know if I’ll still be alive the next time Peninsula has 21 wins. That’s a very hard thing to accomplish as a team.”

Jackson became emotional when talking about his current crop of seniors, who have become the faces of Peninsula’s program. McLaughlin, Jimmy Ritchie, Austin and Garrett Kingman and Josh Keough will all graduate in the spring.

“Just them buying in,” Jackson said. “You’re not going to find a group of guys that love their coach more, and love each other more. I’m hard on them and they’re hard on each other and hard on themselves, but our chemistry and camaraderie and just the love we have for each other, I’ve never seen it at the high school level. When you coach a guy for four years, that’s really hard on a teenage boy. I definitely give them props, cause I’m not the easiest guy to deal with. I think what we’ll remember is all the fun times we had together. I treated them like men. I didn’t treat them like young kids. It was a fun ride.”

This story was originally published March 2, 2016 at 11:51 AM with the headline "Peninsula’s record-breaking season ends with loss to Cleveland."