TACOMA — Jamie Eisinger knew he was going to have his work cut out for him.
His Jackson High School boys basketball team was playing in the Class 4A state tournament for the first time in school history, the Timberwolves were facing one of the tournament favorites and Eisinger was being asked to defend one of the best junior guards in the country.
But the hardest thing for Eisinger to take as his team headed into its state opener against Curtis of Tacoma was the response he got from his Jackson High classmates.
“The whole class was like: ‘You’re playing Curtis? You’re going to get killed; you’ll get murdered,’” said Eisinger, a junior. “But we really thought we had a chance.”
While the final score of the March 8 game might have made a few of the Jackson High faithful look like Nostradamus, Eisinger and his teammates proved for much of the afternoon that they could play with the big boys. Jackson’s 74-56 loss to Curtis wasn’t quite as one-sided as the score appeared.
Granted, Curtis scored the first basket of the game and never trailed. And star junior Isaiah Thomas scored 31 points — one shy of his season average. But Jackson hung around for most of the game.
“We feel that it wasn’t a 20-point loss or 18-point loss,” Jackson junior Brian Rucker said. “Yeah, they beat us by an 18-point score, but I think it was closer than that. We gave them our best shot.”
Despite some early jitters, the Timberwolves were within striking distance of Curtis for most of the afternoon.
Eisinger held his own while guarding Thomas in the first quarter, limiting him to four points off 2-for-6 shooting through the first six minutes, before a second foul forced Jackson coach Steve Johnson to give Eisinger a different defensive assignment. After that, Thomas heated up.
The 5-foot-9 junior point guard drove past one defender for a lay-up with 1:29 remaining in the opening period, then nailed a 3-pointer with three seconds to play for a 14-8 lead. Adding to Jackson’s frustration, Curtis junior Tyree Williams stole the in-bounds pass and hit a 6-foot floater as time expired.
A three-point deficit turned into a 16-8 hole in the final three seconds of the first quarter and Jackson had to fight an uphill battle the rest of the way.
“When you fall behind, then your margin for error is magnified,” Johnson said. “We wanted to get a lead, maybe make them chase us, but obviously it didn’t work out that way.”
Curtis built a 13-point halftime lead, but couldn’t pull away until late in the game. Jackson made a run early in the second half, using an aggressive game plan to pull within 45-39 with 2:38 left in the third period.
Jackson got within six again early in the fourth quarter, at 54-48, before Curtis ended the scare with a 16-2 run. The Vikings finished the game by outscoring Jackson 20-7 over the final seven minutes.
“In the second half we played a lot better,” Rucker said, “but we just ran out of gas.”
Rucker had 18 points for Jackson. Senior Drew Eisinger led the Timberwolves with 23. Jamie Eisinger, Drew’s younger brother, added six points, seven rebounds and six assists.
But the star was the Vikings’ Thomas, who hit 11 of 22 shots on his way to a game-high 31 points. The state’s most sought-after junior — he already has named Washington, Kentucky, UCLA, Georgetown and Florida as his final five college choices — also had six assists before sitting down the final minute of garbage time.
“I think for him, (Thomas’ performance) was probably average,” Curtis coach Lindsay Bemis said. “He’s not going to go score 50 in these tournament games, because he’s going against better players.”
The Timberwolves relied mostly on Jamie Eisinger, a 5-foot-11 junior, to defend Thomas but also tried other defensive tactics such as double teams and denying him the ball.
“He’s amazing,” Jamie Eisinger said of Thomas. “We tried to double-team him, but it still didn’t seem to work. He’s the quickest guard I’ve ever seen. That’s the hardest task I’ve ever had on a basketball court.”
Jackson struggled on offense as well, hitting just five of 20 3-point attempts. A strong shooting team during the regular season, the Timberwolves struggled in their first trip to the Tacoma Dome.
But Jackson isn’t going to let a first-round loss deter the team from trying to make school history. The school has never placed in the state tournament.
“It’s been a great year and we want to stay alive and accomplish something the school’s never done before,” Johnson said.
Scott M. Johnson writes for The Herald in Everett.
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