SEATTLE — King’s boys basketball coach Marv Morris had a trick up his sleeve that he used against Bellevue Christian in the King Classic Jan. 14 at Key Arena.
For the first time ever, the Knights employed a gimmick zone defense that was designed to contain Vikings star forward Jeffrey Downs, who averages 20.7 points per game.
With Spencer Clark and Andrew Lutton taking turns hounding Downs man-to-man, the rest of the Knights played zone and King’s emerged with a 26-14 halftime lead.
Downs scored only seven points in the first half. The Vikings made adjustments in the second half as Downs and Nate Hendricks combined for 23 points, to finish with 18 and 14 respectively.
Still, it wasn’t enough as King’s beat its former Chinook League rival and the defending state Class 1A state champions 53-44.
The tallest and shortest players on the court had big games for the Knights.
King’s 5-foot-7 point guard Jared Madrazo scored 20 points and made 6-of-6 free throws in the fourth quarter to lead the Knights. Meanwhile, 6-foot-9 post Charlie Enquist added 16 points, seven rebounds and three blocked shots.
Morris installed the diamond-and-one the morning of the game.
“Actually we just worked on it this morning for about 20 minutes,” Madrazo said. “That was the only time we’ve worked on it, that’s the first time we’ve done it all year. We know that Jeff Downs is a really good player so we figured we’d throw that at him.”
Madrazo scored 12 points in the second quarter to spark a 18-5 run that gave the Knights the 12-point halftime lead.
The Vikings started to inch closer in the fourth quarter, cutting the lead to 48-44 on a Spencer Kraker 3-pointer with 1:24 to play. With less than a minute to play, Downs missed one-and-one free throw opportunity that could have trimmed the lead to two. Madrazo drew a foul and hit a pair of free throws to stretch the lead to six with 35 seconds left.
“Every time they spurted out a little bit I really believe we showed discipline in not panicking, but coming back and scoring some points,” Morris said.
The Knights succeeded in getting the ball into Enquist in the post and scoring in transition off steals.
“We know when we execute, run what we do we’re pretty hard to beat,” Madrazo said. “It’s when we start doing stuff on our own, (when) we don’t get the ball inside that we don’t play as well.”
The two teams are long-time rivals that battled each other in the now-defunct Chinook League. Morris and Vikings coach Mike Downs are good friends.
“It was circled on my calendar the whole season,” Enquist said. “This was a great win. I’m really psyched about it.”
“They’ve been big rivals for as long as King’s has been around,” Madrazo said. “Even though we’re not in the same league we still really look forward to playing each other whenever we get a chance.”
Bellevue Christian outrebounded the Knights 28-18. Turnovers were nearly even with King’s giving the ball up 18 times and Bellevue Christian 17 times.
King’s improved to 6-0 Cascade Conference and 14-1 overall after a key league win over Lakewood Jan. 17.
“We’re feeling really good about where we are at this point in the season,” Morris said. “We really believe we can be a better basketball team than we are. We don’t believe at all we’ve reached our potential. There’s some areas we’re still struggling in that we need to get better in but we’re going to get better.”
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