Eason, Garfield blow out O’Dea in 3A state basketball championship game, 69-44
After spending his junior season at Federal Way High School, Tari Eason ended his high school career at Garfield High School, where he had spent his freshman and sophomore seasons. And he’s going out on top, with the Bulldogs winning the Class 3A state title, beating five-star recruit Paolo Banchero and Metro League peer O’Dea in the tournament championship game, 69-44.
“This is my last high school basketball game,” Eason said. “To go out on top, coming back to Garfield, this just means everything to me. This is the goal we set out and I set out since the beginning of the season. I worked so hard. Sometimes it’s underappreciated, but this at the end — this is everything. I’m just so happy I could go on top as a champion.”
Garfield, which had lost to O’Dea in both meetings this season, dominated this meeting, shooting 50 percent (27-54) from the field and holding O’Dea to just 36.4 percent (16-44) shooting.
“The regular season really doesn’t matter,” Eason said. “It really starts in the playoffs. We just wanted to get better every game and that’s what we did as a team, got better every single game.”
Garfield’s defensive gameplan revolved around crowding Banchero and making sure no one else on O’Dea’s team had a big night.
“We knew we had the second person (after Banchero) from scoring the most amount of points,” said Garfield guard Koren Johnson, who scored 16 points and was named to the all-tournament team. “That’s what helped us.”
Indeed, Garfield held the Fighting Irish in check. Banchero’s 16 points didn’t come easily, and no one else for O’Dea scored in double digits.
“We have young kids and they believe that they’re going to do it offensively,” said Garfield coach Brandon Roy. “I told them, ‘If you want to win and win comfortably, play defense.’ We’ve had performances this year where we can shut you out a whole quarter, sometimes a half. We just try to keep convincing them that they can do that against anyone. “
Eason scored a game-high 21 points for Garfield, Koren Johnson scored 16, Jaylin Stewart added 11 and Kendall Munson had 10.
Roy said the win was meaningful for Eason, who returned to the program after spending his junior year with Jaden McDaniels and Federal Way.
“I coached Tari two years ago,” Roy said. “He was antsy to play. I wish I could’ve stayed and coached him his junior year. But I told him man, ‘Look, you’ll accomplish everything you want, every goal you set, just trust me.’ He trusted me. That made me feel good as a coach that he was like, ‘Coach, whatever you say, I’m going to get these guys to do,’”
And everything Roy asked him to do, Eason did.
“Every game,” Roy said. “I told him, ‘Use your teammates but we need you to be Superman, too. When you need to do your thing, go do it.’”
This story was originally published March 7, 2020 at 11:47 PM.
