Saturday's Boys Basketball: Tigers Ward Off Adna to Reach Regionals

Posted

The Tigers are, for better or worse, a rough and tumble squad.

They crash the boards. They slow things down. They occasionally make free throws.

And after a tight 47-45 win over Adna on Saturday afternoon, they’ll do those things in the regional round of the State 2B basketball playoffs.

Napavine outrebounded the Pirates 34-17 and overcame rough foul shooting down the stretch to qualify as one of the two teams to survive the consolation bracket in the District 4 2B boys tournament.

The Tigers’ style is a natural fit, given that all five starters were key players on Napavine’s state finalist football team.

“We’re basically just out here playing football and trying to beat up on guys,” Stanley said with a laugh. “And just trying to win some basketball games while we’re doing it.”

Stanley, a quarterback in the fall, was on the receiving end of the game’s final pass, hauling in a full-court pass from Ben Woodrum on an out-of-bounds play with 1.3 seconds left and absorbing a mid-air foul to let the clock run out with his team’s two-point lead intact.

That play only came after the Tigers missed six of their last nine foul shots, including 3 of 4 in the last 17 seconds.

“It’s tough,” Stanley joked. “We don’t have many basketball players on our team, so it’s a lot of luck.”



Napavine did, however, have the glass on its side. At one point late in the game the Tigers missed the front of a 1-and-1, got the rebound, drew a foul, missed another 1-and-1, and got another rebound to wind up back on the foul line.

“What was big was we only had four team fouls, and Ben (Woodrum) and Keith (Olson) getting those extra possessions,” Tiger coach Rex Stanley said. “We weren’t assuming they were going in, I’ll put it that way.”

The rebounding, the coach explained, was the heavy focus coming into Saturday’s loser-out game. Napavine had won the rebounding battle, and the game, in the teams’ first meeting, but lost the glass and the game the second time around in Adna.

Woodrum and Dawson Stanley both had six rebounds on Saturday, with Olson adding five.

Cole Fay finished with 17 points to lead Adna, while Lyle Metzenberg scored 16 with seven rebounds. The Pirates went just 4 of 18 from long range, but forced 19 Napavine turnovers.

Adna finishes the season with a 15-8 record and graduates seniors Metzenberg, Austen Apperson, Brady Collins, Camden Ryan, Trevor Minkoff and Matthew Scheuber.

Napavine improved to 15-10 with the win, and will move into the regional round next weekend with a loser-out game against a to-be-determined opponent. The Tigers won a pigtail game with Onalaska, 55-54, beat Northwest Christian 55-52, lost to Toledo and beat Wahkiakum 57-51 to reach Saturday’s game.

“We knew coming in this district’s wide open,” Rex Stanley said. “This is just one of those years where there’s a lot of teams that could go, and this group stayed dialed in and focused, and no matter what happened, we kept that main goal in mind.

“And nothing focuses Napavine more than seeing Adna, and that dialed us right in,” he added. “I’m proud of these guys. They showed up today.”