TUMWATER — Jeff Gallagher didn’t even wait for the final buzzer.
With the clock running and his backups in soaking up garbage time of the Black Hills boys basketball team’s 79-45 loss to Mark Morris, Gallagher went down the line of his starters on the bench, giving each one a pat on the head and a word of encouragement.
Mama said there’d be days like this, after all.
“It’s one of those things where yeah, we wish we would have had a better showing, but it already has to have left our mind, because we’ve got another one on Thursday,” Gallagher said.
Black Hills got the first shot of the night in, leading 11-3 four minutes into the first quarter, but the rest of the night was complete domination from the Monarchs.
Mark Morris finished the night 12 for 22 from beyond the arc, with Braydon Olson and Kobe Parlin both drilling four triples. Olson finished with 32 points and Parlin had 23, combining to outscore Black Hills by themselves. When the Wolves jumped out to their early lead — thanks to two Harrison Pilon 3-pointers, two Max Johnson drives, and a Keagan Rongen free throw — those two led the comeback themselves, with Olson scoring 11 points and Parlin adding nine as part of a 20-5 run to end the quarter.
“You watch them on film, and they don’t make mistakes,” Gallagher said. “You look at it, and every pass is delivered on time, right into their shooting pocket. They’re just crisp and solid in everything that they do. They make you make mistakes, and that allows them to get some wide-open looks.”
And from there, the Monarchs only kept going. With Mark Morris scoring so quickly, Black Hills’ own offense sped up beyond its comfortable pace, leading to nine second-quarter turnovers, while the Wolves only managed six points.
“I thought a lot of our turnovers were self-inflicted,” Gallagher said. “Throwing the ball to the other team, throwing it out of bounds. We knew going over our scout yesterday that we couldn’t afford to have live turnovers that turned into buckets and open shots for them, and that’s exactly what we did.”
Black Hills went into halftime down 44-22, and Mark Morris’ pace increased in the third, with 26 point points pushing the lead out to 70-34. A Parlin drive less than two minutes in made it 75-35 and triggered the running clock, and soon the backups came flooding in.
Pilon ended up leading the Wolves with 11 points, and Simon Nysted had eight. Rongen scored five points and brought down nine boards, and leading scorer Johnnie Stallings was held to just two on a layup off an inbounds play midway through the third.
Gallagher pulled Rongen and Stallings off at the same time in the fourth quarter, and had extra words for the two of them before they sat down for the night.
“They’re our senior leaders,” he said. “They went through the battles for the past few years, they went through football season together. I just told them that quicker that they could get their minds right, the better it is for our team, because they’re kind of the pulse of our team emotionally.”
Black Hills will see how well it can flush its rough night tomorrow, to prepare for a winner-to-State matchup against Ridgefield, at Mark Morris’ gym on Thursday.
