Swillie makes game-winning shot in overtime as Life Christian beats Zillah in 1A regionals, 82-81
When the game was on the line, Bradley Swillie wanted the ball in his hands. Trailing by one with under 15 seconds to go, the Life Christian senior guard beat his defender along the baseline and attacked the rim, making the game-winning layup with 12.5 seconds to go to beat No. 6 Zillah in overtime at Foss High School in the 1A state regional round, 82-81.
“I always want the ball in my hands, knowing if there’s a play that needs to be made, If I need to create for somebody else … We all know if a play needs to be made, my teammates have a lot of trust in me allowing me to get that bucket,” said Swillie who had 24 points in the win.
That’s just the way Swillie is wired. In the biggest moments, he wants to rise to the occasion. And for this year’s Life Christian squad, he’s earned that right.
“It’s just always good to have a ball handler that you feel like you can trust,” said Life Christian coach Charles Simmons. “And with Swillie in the game, I trust him 100 percent.”
While he could have settled for an outside shot, Swillie wanted to get to the rim for two reasons.
“Not only is it a high-percentage shot, but you put the refs into a position to make a call,” he said.
Swillie made another nice play a few minutes earlier that looked like it might have won the game in regulation for Life Christian. With under 20 seconds to go in the fourth quarter, he worked around a screen from a teammate near the elbow, drawing a couple defenders toward him and dishing it off to Chae Haynes for an easy layup, giving Life Christian a 75-72 lead.
But Zillah wasn’t done yet. With five seconds to go, Luke Navarre hit a high-difficulty 3-pointer on the other end to send the game to overtime. Zillah, which refused to ever go away, earned the respect of the Life Christian coaching staff. Clay Delp and Luke Navarre both filled up the stat sheet, scoring 25 points apiece. Senior guard Ashton Waldman added 22 in the loss.
“(Delp) is a lot better than I expected, I’ll say that,” Simmons said. “They’re scrappy, well-coached, but I think it showed a lot to our team’s resilience to just stay the course and come out with a victory. Survive and advance.”
Indeed, Zillah was scrappy, well-coached and have obvious chemistry on the floor together. But the one thing the Leopards don’t have is size, and Life Christian was able to exploit that disadvantage at will, feeding senior 6-foot-8 post Chae Haynes. Zillah had no answer for the Eagles’ big man, who scored a game-high 32 points.
“He’s the best big in the state, in my opinion,” Swillie said. “I know I can trust him.”
Life Christian won the majority of its regular season games in blowout fashion, so Simmons feels like getting a serious test from one of the state’s best teams before next week’s 2A state tournament at the Yakima Valley SunDome will prove invaluable. Finding a way to get stops at critical times and make plays in pressure situations should serve the Eagles well.
“We (needed it), we definitely did,” Simmons said. “We don’t get a lot of games like that during the season. You always know during the season that mentally, that’s something we’re going to have to overcome. We run through the whole season knowing that we’re going to pretty much win the majority of our games. So yeah, we definitely needed this going to the Dome. I think that was huge.”
