By Gerardo Bolong
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Good offensive decision making blended with an ever present attacking defense to spur the Mount Rainier boys basketball team to a 70-47 demolition of visiting Kent Meridian in a NPSL 4A Cascade division conflict on Tues., Jan. 22.
The win pushed the Rams into solo second place at 9-4 ahead of Kennedy Catholicity (8-5).
Due to an earlier loss to the Lancers, the Rams need to defeat KC at home on Friday to keep Kennedy Catholic out of the second spot. MR would take third into the NPSL tournament in Enumclaw.
”The defense was there all night,” said Mount Rainier head coach Brandon Horstman. “The push we had was on offense. They played smart and didn’t just take quick shots. The inside-outside game worked.”
Defensive ball hawking in the second quarter plus the alert passing offense began with Amanuel Gebreziabher capitalizing on repeated steals for a reverse lay up and fade-away three-pointer to start the quarter for the Rams to increase the 12-10 first quarter edge. Ricky Bell’s half court steal and lay in made the score 19-10 with just more than five minutes until halftime.
Mount Rainier continued rocking Kent Meridian’s world with full court pressure that progressively triggered steals and bad passes as the Rams swept the Royals away like ten pins in bowling.
Six-door, seven-inch senior Yadel Hedego and Michael Nelson joined the inside-outside attacks as MR progressively built the first half lead up to 33-16 before settling for a 36-21 lead at intermission.
Continued pressure defense and offensive good choices progressively built the double digit leads up to a high of 25 points with just less than five minutes remaining in regulation.
The rest of the game, the starters were gradually removed in order to cheer for their favorite reserve players.
Gebrezhiabher led the Rams with 15 points. Hedego scored 13 points with some intimidating blocked shots during the running Rams surge.
With players able to rest regularly, the rest of the Ram scoring was spread out among numerous players. Kole Lerwick had eight points as Will Gard, Nelson and Bell contributed seven points each. The Gard scoring was based entirely on 7 of 15 free throw shooting in the final quarter.
