Kentwood ousts Cascade boys 64-54 in 4A regionals

Published 11:08 pm Saturday, February 27, 2016

EVERETT — For all the Cascade boys basketball team accomplished this season, one goal — the most important one — eluded them.

The Bruins fell 64-54 to Kentwood in a 4A boys regional game on Saturday, ending their season one game short of the state quarterfinals in Tacoma.

“It’s a great year and it’s a great season. We accomplished a lot of different things, but we didn’t accomplish the one thing that we still want to do which is get to the Tacoma Dome and play,” Cascade head coach Darrell McNeal said. “The way that they do state and regionals and all that, the kids don’t get the opportunity to go play in the dome and have that experience.

“We’re glad to be here and we’re glad we had a great season, but it’s unfortunate we couldn’t advance a little bit more.”

Defensively, the Bruins could never find an answer for the Conquerors. Kentwood shot 59.1 percent (26-for-44) on its field-goal attempts and 41.2 percent (7-for-17) from 3-point range.

“We couldn’t stop them from getting into the paint,” McNeal said. “They kept driving and drive, draw and dish. We couldn’t keep guys in front of us. We couldn’t play zone. We couldn’t play man. It just seemed like everything we tried to do tonight they were able to punish us a little bit.”

Junior Rayvaughn Bolton led the way for Kentwood. He finished with 25 points, shooting 10-for-16 from the field and 5-for-9 from long range.

“That was just poor defense on our part,” McNeal said. “Great shooting by him, but poor defense on our part.”

To make matters worse for the Bruins, their normally potent offense wasn’t clicking in the second half. Cascade managed just 22 points after halftime. Senior guard Drew Magaoay, who was coming off a 45-point performance against Kamiak in the 4A District 1 championship game, finished with 16 points, but just three of those came in the final two quarters.

“They’re a little longer than what we’ve faced in the season, so they were able to cause a little more problems for us,” McNeal said. “I kind of felt like we really didn’t do a really good job of executing and just playing smarter throughout the game.”

Cascade led 32-31 at halftime, but the Conquerors took the lead just seconds into the second half and never trailed again.

“I didn’t feel like the momentum was slipping. If we would have stayed with our stuff and executing we would have been fine,” McNeal said. “My problem was, when we executed we missed a bunch of layups. Then we come down (to the other end of the floor) and they make their layups, so what are you going to do? You’ve got to find a way to stop them down there and finish the gimmes down here and we didn’t do that tonight.”

The Bruins’ season ends with two losses, one to Kamiak in the final game of the regular season and Saturday’s loss to Kentwood. After being ranked fifth in the final Associated Press poll of the season — and holding the No. 3 spot for much of it — McNeal expected a different team to show up.

“I expected us to play a little better than what we did,” McNeal said.

At Everett Community College

Kentwood 16 15 20 13 —64

Cascade 17 15 13 9 —54

Kentwood—Elijah Millon 0, Koby Huerta 5, Rayvaughn Bolton 25, Davonte Sanchez 12, Connor Benson 0, Beau Roggenbach 5, Armann Gill 2, Ryan Wilds 0, Eli’sha Sheppard 6, D’Angelo Minnis 0, Darius Luborn 9. Cascade—Trevon Blackmon 3, Drew Magaoay 16, D’Andre Bryant 2, Cameron McGrath 5, Alex Stewart 0, Muhammed Kolly 1, Kevin Burns 2, Brennen Hancock 8, Isaiah Gotell 17. Records—Kentwood 20-6. Cascade 21-2.