Banchero, O’Dea cruise past Rainier Beach, setting up heavyweight championship matchup with Garfield
No. 7 O’Dea got rolling early and never stopped against No. 13 Rainier Beach in the Class 3A state tournament semifinal, cruising to a 73-53 win over its Metro peer and into Saturday’s state championship game against No. 4 Garfield, which beat top-seeded Eastside Catholic in the other semifinal.
“We got rolling early,” said O’Dea five-star recruit, 6-foot-9 power forward Paolo Banchero. “We wanted to come out with intensity and that’s what we did. So it was a good win.”
Banchero scored 19 points in the win and hauled in 15 rebounds. Dezjay Perkins scored 11 points for the Irish in the win. O’Dea shot 56.9 percent (29-51) from the field in the win and 44.4 percent (4-9) from 3-point range.
Saturday’s championship game figures to be a much stiffer challenge — one O’Dea is up for.
“It’s the state championship,” Banchero said. “You don’t gotta do a lot of motivating for that one. So we’re all going to be motivated. It’s our last game of the year, last game for the seniors in their career, so we’re going to come out and do our best.”
O’Dea is 2-0 against Garfield this season, beating the Bulldogs 76-56 on Jan. 7 and 64-60 on Feb. 20. But Garfield could be playing its best basketball of the season, coming off an impressive 71-46 runaway win over No. 1 Eastside Catholic in the other semifinal game.
“(We just have to) execute our gameplan, play hard and play together and we’ll see what we do,” Banchero said.
