By Gerardo Bolong
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
BELLEVUE - Tenth-seeded West Seattle used a first half blitz and hung on for dear life to complete a long run through the SeaKing 3A boys basketball tournament.
The Westsiders’ 58-54 win at Sammamish High School on Mon., Feb. 18, against O’Dea earned them a third place seed out of District while also improving their RPI in advance of the state regional selection process.
After taking the lead early in the first quarter by way of driving hard on defense and running the court in transition offense, the Wildcats stifled the echoes of the Fighting Irish to build and maintain margins that reached as high as 13 points (45-32) as 35 seconds showed in the third quarter following a length of the court pass to Sage Nelson for a score midway through the third quarter.
O’Dea gamely fought back to whittle its deficit to single digits. Shots stopped dropping regularly for West Seattle and the Fighting Irish closed within 49-44 before Xavier Giomi cut loose a scoring three-ball for the Wildcats.
Less than two minutes remained when a pair of Nuh’Kosi Roberson free throws pushed the score to 54-46.
O’Dea returned fire to draw closer at 54-49, but failed on two opportunities to get even closer.
With 39.4 seconds showing, Roberson sank the first of two free throw tries.
Six-foot, nine-inch Paolo Banchero then scored in the lane to set the scene for the end game drama.
Roberson’s two charity tosses were more than offset by Banchero’s trio of free throws after being fouled beyond the arc as 19.2 seconds showed.
The Wildcats held it together just long enough to hold on.
“We started out well, got the lead and were hanging on for dear life the rest of the game,” said West Seattle head coach Keffrey Fazio.
The extra games that needed to be played did not faze the Wildcats.
”The kids would rather play games than practice, anyway,” added Fazio. “It was a nice accomplishment. I’m proud. Both teams were missing players and it was a hard fought game.”
One disquieting note was an injury to Maar Rambang.
Roberson drove and pumped his way to a game high 24 points. Ronan Barney was solid for 13 points and Nelson added eight.
Banchero with 22 and John Misel at 17 led the Fighting Irish.
The District player roster for West Seattle (17-7) included Sage Nelson, Roman Barnet, Vlad Salaridze, Bille Shiekh, Ben Fryer, Abdi Jama, Max Lee, Xavier Giomi, Isaiah Gagnon, Nuh’Kosi Roberson, Abdul Mohamed, and Maar Rambang.
Assistants for varsity head coach Fazio are Kasey Poirrier and Blake Cleveringa.
