TUMWATER — Friday night put the spotlight on Black Hills. The first real matchup between 2A EvCo contenders this winter brought W.F. West north to Thurston County. The crowds were out. There was even a fake ESPN broadcast crew in front of the student section.
The stage was set, and the Wolves took advantage of the chance to make a statement, beating the Bearcats 57-41 and looking real good doing it.
“I don’t know how much people kind of thought of us coming into the season,” Black Hills head coach Jeff Gallagher said. “So yeah, I think people kind of know that we’re here, and we’re going to compete.”
After a tight first quarter, Black Hills tied the game up at 16-16 on a Johnnie Stallings 3-pointer, and on the Wolves’ next possession, Simon Nysted buried a triple of his own to give the Wolves a 19-16 lead.
The hosts wouldn’t give it back the rest of the night, clamping down on the Bearcats and extending the advantage slowly with defense turned to offense.
“We really flew around,” Gallagher said. “Our full-court pressure really gave them some problems, led to a lot of turnovers. We did the best we could on Soren (Dalan), but he’s so talented and big, he’s going to get his.”
W.F. West’s 6-foot-11 center did get his, scoring a game-high 18 points. But the Wolves found the best way to guard him early on: if you steal the ball in the back court, he won’t beat you in the post.
Black Hills forced 19 turnovers on the night, 12 of which came in the second half. As the Wolves started to pull away, things spiraled a bit for the Bearcats, with multiple Black Hills buckets being followed up with steals right off the inbounds pass, or before the Bearcats could get the ball back upcourt.
At the head of the defensive snake was Max Johnson, who scored 10 of his 12 points in the second half, and six in transition after steals.
“Max stepped up big,” Gallagher said. “We challenged him to be more of an offensive threat, and the past two games he’s really responded. Our full-court pressure is something that is a bit new to us this year, we haven’t relied on it in the past. But I think we’ve got the athletes this year to do it, and they’ve really bought it.”
Johnnie Stallings led Black Hills with 16 points, and Nystad had 13, hitting three 3-pointers.
For W.F. West, no player aside from Dalan got into double figures; Lucas Hoff was next up eight points off the bench. But the Bearcats couldn’t find the sustained offense needed to get out of the hole. The visitors’ only run of the second half was a 4-0 streak with 4:20 left in the fourth quarter that cut the deficit to 47-41; they wouldn’t score again the rest of the night.
“We just didn’t get to the right spots and follow the gameplan,” W.F. West coach Chris White said. “We just weren’t in the right places, over and over again. A lot of the turnovers were guys just thinking that their teammate would be there, and he wasn’t even there.”
Down low, Keagan Rongen had eight rebounds — five of them coming on the offensive glass — and eight points to show for a long night battling Dalan in the post. Dalan logged nine boards, falling short of a double-double for the first time this season.
“Keagan is going to be the surprise of the conference,” Gallagher said. “He’s a tough matchup, and when he can get one-on-one in the block, we like those.”
Black Hills (3-3, 3-0 2A EvCo) will take its momentum south across the board, playing Valley Catholic (Ore.) at the Moda Center in Portland on Saturday.
W.F. West (3-2, 2-1) will get the weekend to bounce back, taking the early-season learning experience into a district non-league matchup against Washougal on Tuesday.
“They wanted it more than us tonight, it seems,” White said. “But we’ll be okay. It doesn’t feel great, but I have a lot of positive takeaways. I really liked the contributions and growth out of my bench. And I think long term, we’re going to be just fine, but it’s obviously not the outcome we were hoping for.”
