State champs: Curtis defeats No. 1 Mount Si to win 4A title, 52-49
Tyce Paulsen didn’t hesitate when he saw Mount Si guard Eli Spence trapped at the half court line by teammates Devin Whitten and Gabe Martin. Spence, double-teamed and in trouble, had to get rid of the ball, so he floated a one-handed pass to a teammate.
But he never saw Paulsen, lurking in the background, ready to pounce. The Curtis High School junior extended his long left arm, stealing the pass at midcourt and converting the routine layup at the other end, giving the Vikings a 51-49 lead with 21 seconds to go in the overtime period of Curtis’ Class 4A high school boys basketball state championship game at the Tacoma Dome on Saturday evening.
Those points proved enough for Curtis to cling to and the Vikings, the state tournament’s No. 2 seed, hung on to beat the top-seeded Wildcats — who came into Saturday’s championship game undefeated on the season — 52-49.
“It’s a dream come true, for real,” said Paulsen, who scored 11 points in the win. “I’ve been thinking about this since watching my brothers (Zack and Jase, who also played for Curtis) play. It’s an honor.”
About that steal: Curtis coach Tim Kelly had been pestering Paulsen all game to jump passes in similar spots.
“All game long, we were telling even on the wings, ‘Go out and get that. Go get that, go get that, go get that!’” Kelly said. “All the sudden, he went and got it. That was so cool.”
Mount Si looked like it might win the game in regulation, when 6-foot-7 senior forward Quin Patterson nailed a corner 3-pointer to give Mount Si a three-point lead with 36 seconds to go. But Curtis star sophomore Zoom Diallo wasn’t ready to pack it in, scoring a layup with 25 seconds left to cut the lead to one. Curtis got the ball back and Diallo again attacked the rim, drawing a foul with 1.8 seconds and a chance to win the game at the free throw line.
Diallo missed the first. With the entire Curtis student and fan section holding its breath, Diallo made the second, sending the game to overtime.
“It just shows no matter what — we’re down, fouls are not coming — we just told each other that we got each other at the end of the day,” said Diallo, who scored a game-high 22 points. “You hold yourself accountable. Overtime we just told each other, ‘Hey, let’s keep pushing. Let’s keep pushing.’”
Curtis came into the game as the underdog, a role that the Vikings’ players relished.
“Coming into the state tournament, we were not the favorites at all,” said junior guard Cinque Maxwell. “Everyone was saying, ‘Can Curtis beat the Wildcats? Can Curtis do this, can Curtis do that?’ And now look at us now.”
In the first couple minutes of the game, it looked like those predictions might bear out. Mount Si jumped out to a quick 8-0 lead. But Curtis never wavered.
“In the state championship, everyone is good,” Maxwell said. “They’re going to make shots, but you just have to come back with a mindset. Our thing coming into this, since we were the underdogs, was to believe. Just believe we could make it happen.”
It wasn’t so long ago when Curtis wasn’t even on top of the 4A South Puget Sound League. Last spring, during the covid-shortened league-only season, a Jackson Grant-led Olympia squad beat Curtis in the league championship game. Now, the Vikings are state champions.
“So much growth has happened (since the loss to Olympia),” Paulsen said. “Everyone on our team has been so mature throughout this whole process and we really played together. We won a state championship, not many people can say that.”
It’s the program’s first state championship since 2013, when Curtis defeated Jackson in the championship game, 60-56. Curtis is the first Pierce County boys team to win a state title since Foss won the Class 2A title in 2017 and the first to win in 4A since Curtis won its last title.
“We kept saying throughout the whole game, we’ve gotta believe,” Paulsen said. “Believe is a big word today. They were supposed to win that game. We had more heart, we had more grit and we won it.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2022 at 6:17 PM.
