Here come the Eagles: No. 15 Graham-Kapowsin knocks off No. 7 Davis, 65-47
There must be some magic in the orange jerseys of Graham-Kapowsin High School this school year. After the Eagles won the Class 4A state high school football championship and a nationally-televised GEICO Bowl Series game in Las Vegas against Georgia powerhouse Collins Hill, the Eagles are making another run this March. This one is coming on the hardwood.
Graham-Kapowsin, which snuck into the 4A state boys basketball tournament with an upset win over Glacier Peak in the regional round, isn’t just happy to be at the Tacoma Dome. The Eagles want to make a run, and they started on the right track on Wednesday night, beating No. 7 Davis, 65-47.
“We’re really motivated,” said guard Elijah Cain, who scored a game-high 19 points. “We want respect to be put on our name because nobody respected us coming into here, so we want to show them what we can do.”
At the heart of this team is Fresno State bound quarterback Joshua Wood, who was The News Tribune’s All-Area football player of the year in the fall. He scored 14 points for the Eagles to complement Cain and Isaiah Norris, who scored 15.
Graham-Kapowsin jumped on Davis from the start, pushing the tempo and forcing the Pirates into some bad shots on the other end. When the dust settled, Davis converted a paltry 30.9 percent of its shots, shooting 33.3 percent from 3-point range and 54.5 percent from the free-throw line.
“Just don’t let them start going early,” Wood said. “That was the plan, you know, make them call that first timeout and everything will go our way. Attack the hoop first, the whole atmosphere. Everyone was saying attack the hoop, so that’s what we did. Defensively, we just stayed to our core and stayed attacking, just trapping and going right at them.”
Cain said he feels like Davis was probably already looking onto the quarterfinal round before Wednesday’s matchup.
“Being the underdog in the game, teams don’t see what we can do,” he said. “They try to look past us and see the next team that they’re going to play if they beat us. I feel like they don’t really gameplan for us like they should.”
For Davis, Brandon Lee Jr. scored a team-high 13 points and Cesar Hernandez added 12.
Up next for Graham-Kapowsin: No. 1 Mount Si on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. It’ll be a tall order against the tournament’s top-seeded team, but don’t count out the Eagles. There may be a little magic left yet in those retina-burning orange jerseys.
“We’re motivated to go get that ring,” Wood said. “We’ve got a big one coming up next, Mount Si. It’s going to be a hard one but we’re going to dig deep and try to make a deep run and try to win a state championship. We used to say, ‘Let’s get to the Dome’ but now, it’s time to get a ring.”
This story was originally published March 2, 2022 at 8:25 PM.
