King’s weathers Sultan surge

SHORELINE — The revved up, red-and-white rooting section that spilled out of the King’s bleachers got its homecoming wish.

In the nightcap of a girls and boys basketball doubleheader the Knights weathered a furious fourth-quarter comeback by Sultan and held on for a 54-45 victory Dec. 17 at Mike Martin Gym.

King’s (1-0 league, 3-2 overall) never trailed in the Cascade Conference opener for both teams, but saw its 19-point second-half advantage shrivel to four.

“We couldn’t make a shot and they couldn’t miss for a while,” Knights coach Marv Morris said. “No matter what they did, it went in.”

R.J. Perkins spearheaded the Sultan rally, scoring 12 of his game-high 18 points after the break. Caleb Barnhill drained a putback jumper with 1:24 to play to cap an 8-2 run by the Turks that cut the King’s lead to 49-45.

Erich Fuhlendorf answered with a hard drive and layin for the Knights and Sultan missed four field goal attempts in the final 50 seconds. The freshman forward finished with nine points and five rebounds.

King’s maintained a double-digit cushion for most of the third quarter. Joey Kennard hit back-to-back 3-pointers and Fuhlendorf and Spencer Clark followed with consecutive 3-point goals that gave the Knights a 40-21 lead.

“Our threes kept us in the game,” junior Jared Madrazo said. “Three of our five starters can shoot and we’ve got guys on the bench who can come in and shoot it.”

Madrazo scored all eight King’s points in the first quarter, including two 3-pointers in the first three minutes. The 5-foot-7 guard sank a pair of free throws at the 1:38 mark of the second period to ignite a 7-2 run to close the half.

The Turks were 6 of 8 from the field in the third quarter and hit seven of their first 10 fourth-quarter attempts to pull within six with 2:30 remaining.

“Defensively we didn’t do the same job we did in the first half,” Morris said. “That frustrated me. We let people get in front of us.”

Morris also pointed to a rebounding shortfall that has hampered the Knights, who boast a rotation that tops out at 6-foot-3.

“We’re a short team,” Morris said. “We haven’t outrebounded anybody yet. Not one team. We’re little and little guys don’t get a heckuva lot of rebounds. That’s the way it is.”

The Knights are relying on accurate outside shooting and stringent defensive pressure to alleviate a drop-off in rebounds. Sultan beat King’s on the glass 25 to 22, but the Knights owned a 18 to 13 edge in turnovers and five different players supplied 3-pointers.

Madrazo scored a team-high 14 points and Calvin Fujii added 12 points and six boards.

“I think every game is going to be close,” Madrazo said. “We don’t have one guy who’s going to score a lot every game. It’s going to be spread out.”

Fujii has yet to play at full strength. The 6-1 senior post has been slowed by a football-related injury and a case of the flu. Against the Turks, Fujii made repeated trips to the bench.

“I kept giving him breaks,” Morris said. “That last stretch (in the fourth quarter) he went the longest and it was hard on him. He’s not ready for it. When he plays, we’re a different team.”

Morris has noticed several areas where the Knights are in need of improvement to compete in what’s projected to be a wide-open conference race.

“I don’t see us as a good basketball team yet. But we’re going to be,” he said. “We’ve got some new guys who are going to help us out later in the season. They’ve just got to learn and grow into stuff.”

King’s travels to Phoenix next week for a holiday tournament before resuming league play Jan. 4 against an Archbishop Murphy squad that is coming off its first state berth in school history.

“Hopefully we’ll come together more as a team going on this trip. Last year we went to California and got a lot of competition,” Madrazo said.

“We still haven’t played as good as I think we can play. Tonight we made a big step in getting better. We’ve got a lot of new guys and we’re kind of young. We’ve got to keep working hard.”