It’s been a harsh past seven years since the Centralia College men’s basketball team last had an “X” next to its name in the NWAC standings and made it to the NWAC Basketball Championships in 2019.
In the previous six seasons, including the unofficial and shortened 2020-21 campaign impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trailblazers won just 33 games and lost 114, good for just a 22.4% win percentage.
But the tides started to change dramatically in 2025-26 under third-year head coach Josef Chirhart. As is the story of junior college basketball, his young team that he recruited last year quickly turned veteran. Centralia started the season 7-0, which was already the most wins the Trailblazers had recorded in a season in six years. They braved bumpy waters in the middle of the season and won when it mattered most, including Saturday afternoon in their biggest game in years.
In an NWAC Tournament play-in game at home, Centralia College ousted Highline College 83-74 to punch its ticket to the big dance in Pasco. As the buzzer rang, emotions from the veteran Trailblazers developed from triumphant and jubilant to sentimental, with players realizing they had completed a remarkable turnaround.
And they’re not done.
“We had a couple of goals. One of the goals was to get to 15 wins. The next one was to split with everybody in the league, and then make it to the playoffs,” Chirhart said. “Fifteen wins, we took care of that. We didn’t get a chance to beat everybody, but the playoff one was major for us. I’m super proud of my boys. It’s big. This is gonna be something a lot of us remember for a long time.”
Coming into Saturday’s game, the message from the Centralia coaches was clear: there are no ifs anymore. The Trailblazers had closely followed all of the postseason scenarios for the final few weeks of the regular season, needing some teams to win here and others to lose there. The only thing left to do for Centralia was win. No one else controlled its destiny.
“It was a one-and-done mentality,” sophomore Clay Morgan said. “If we win, we’re in. If we lose, we’re out. We had 40 minutes of basketball that we knew we could play, so we wanted to put everything on the line.”
Highline scored first and led 4-2 for its only leads of the game. Morgan went ballistic to start the game; after missing his first 3-point attempt, the Tumwater grad attacked the basket for a pair of layups. Then, Morgan stepped outside the arc again and nailed his next two 3-pointers to give CC a 21-11 lead.
“Coach Taylor [Clinton] always preaches getting to the rim first. I’m gonna credit him. I hit my first two layups,” Morgan said of his hot start. “Coach Joe [Chirhart] always says if you see one go in as a shooter, you have a green light.”
The Trailblazers responded to every Highline run in the first half. After six unanswered by the Thunderbirds to cut the margin to four, Centralia bumped it back up to 11 via buckets from Shay Brannon, Ahren Bee-Richards and the fourth triple of the first half by Morgan. Morgan added his fifth trey of the half off an offensive rebound, finishing with 21 points by halftime as Centralia led 46-33 at the break.
After the Trailblazers grew their advantage to 14 early in the second half, Highline clawed back to within one possession with a 13-2 run. Morgan halted the spurt with his sixth triple of the afternoon to give him 26 points. Brannon also attacked the paint for a handful of layups for some insurance points midway through the second half.
Yet the Thunderbirds continued to hang around. They cut the lead to five on multiple occasions, but this time, it was Bee-Richards who shut down Highline’s comeback attempts. His only two 3-pointers of the day came with 3:29 to go to make it a 10-point game and with 1:42 left to turn a six-point margin into nine, serving as a dagger to help Centralia finish off a nine-point win.
“I get my confidence from God. He instills me to play out there with no fear and no anxiety,” Bee-Richards said. “My teammates all have a lot of confidence in me. I missed one early, and every single one of them told me, ‘We want you shooting that every time.’ That replayed in my head.”
Morgan led all scorers with 29 points, his second-highest scoring output of the season. Brannon added 15 points and six rebounds, while Bee-Richards totaled 14 points off the bench. Julian Ibarra added 13 points off the bench, and Javonte Walls and Luke Brewer each contributed six.
The last time Centralia made it to the NWAC Tournament, its nine current sophomores were in seventh grade. But the group has quickly transformed a lowly basketball program into a winner playing its first meaningful basketball in March under Chirhart’s leadership.
“Having nine sophomores is a big deal. They have that experience of what to expect in the region and in non-league games and the professionalism of showing up every day and working hard at practice,” Chirhart said. “These nine sophomores really helped the culture change.”
Centralia College (18-11) earns the fourth seed in the West and will take on the South’s No. 1 seed Umpqua in the NWAC Sweet 16 at Columbia Basin College in Pasco on Thursday, March 5.
Chirhart believes his team can make some madness happen in March out east.
“I’d like to believe that we're not done. I think we might be that dangerous group,” he said. “Once you get to the tournament, anything can happen.”
