Tumwater flies past W.F. West in 2A EvCo tilt, remains undefeated in league play
The T-Birds allowed themselves the time for one celebratory yell. Then the Tumwater High School boys basketball team seemingly moved on in their heads.
Sure, the last 11 minutes of Friday night’s 65-50 Class 2A Evergreen Conference victory over visiting W.F. West was more than fun as the T-Birds finally got out and running, feeding each other alley-oop passes and throwing down dunks. But, the work isn’t done.
Tumwater has a final regular season home game on Tuesday night against crosstown rival Black Hills. And the Wolves are just a game behind the T-Birds (15-4, 11-0 2A EvCo) in the loss column. Black Hills (13-5, 9-1) still has two league games to play.
“Most important game of the season,” Tumwater senior Andrew Collins said. “I think we’re on track to win the league championship. Let’s go win this. Let’s go hard.”
The T-Birds went hard on Friday. It just didn’t become easy and fun until there were just 3 minutes, 7 seconds to go in the third quarter.
Just before Luke Brewer made a 3-pointer at that moment, the Bearcats (12-6, 6-4) still held a slim 36-34 lead thanks to a basket inside from W.F. West big man Soren Dalan. Dalan was fouled as he rolled in the ball right at the rim, but the 6-foot-11 post missed the free throw.
To that point in the game, Dalan had been the dominant force. The basket gave him 16 points — he finished with a team-high 20 to go with 14 rebounds — and gave W.F. West its final lead of the game.
“He’s tough,” Tumwater coach Josh Wilson said. “He’s a big kid and they do a good job finding him. We just had to have a little bit of focus. We started to have a little more intention, running another guy at him as soon as he touched the ball.”
The adjustment disrupted the Bearcats offense and put more pressure on the W.F. West guards. That pressure turned into turnovers and runout baskets over the final 11 minutes of the game.
Brewer’s 3-ball started a 16-2 run that covered the final 3:07 of the third and the first 2:16 of the fourth quarter. It ended when Luke Reid fed Collins a lob at the rim and Collins slammed the ball through the hoop with 5:44 to play and the T-Birds suddenly holding a 53-38 lead.
It was one of four massive dunks from Collins, who finished with a game-high 22 points. Brewer also had two big dunks in the game and finished with 17 points — 11 in the second half.
“My whole goal every game is to have fun as a team,” Collins said. “That really puts it together. Almost every dunk was from a teammate and that’s just what I live for. I love that. It gets our team going, it gets the crowd going, it gets everyone excited to watch us. It gets us excited to play and there’s nothing better than that.”
A Tyler Klatush 3-pointer eventually pulled the Bearcats back within 10 with 4:55 to go. But seconds later, Reid scored the last of his 16 points to ignite another 10-0 spurt that again ended with a big Collins dunk on a nifty pass from underneath the basket by Gunnar Harroun.
That exchange gave Tumwater its biggest lead of the night, 63-43, with 2:14 left.
“I think getting out there and running kind of got to W.F. West for a second,” Wilson said. “Their energy started to dip a little bit, and we kept at it, kept running and stuck with the game plan. It kind of opened it up there in the second half, which is fun.”
Once the final buzzer sounded though, fun over. At least until Tuesday, the T-Birds hope.