TACOMA — Brady Kageyama was forced to rely on his ears. His eyes were covered.
What he heard as his final three-pointer went through the net was the Bellevue crowd at the Tacoma Dome erupting. Kageyama would make 3 of 4 free throws during a dominating overtime period to help lead the Wolverines to a 67-55 victory over Eastside Catholic on Saturday morning at the Tacoma Dome.
Bellevue claimed the fourth-place trophy at the Class 3A state boys basketball tournament. Eastside Catholic (20-10) finished sixth.
“The defender was so close, he put his hand in my face,” Kageyama said about the last three-pointer of four he made. “I didn’t even see the ball. I just threw it up there, and it was the most amazing feeling.”
That shot was the catapult for the Wolverines (25-5), who outscored Eastside Catholic 13-1 during the decisive four minutes.
The game only got into the extra period thanks to Alex Yu’s three-pointer with 14.8 seconds remaining in regulation. Yu tied the game at 54-54 after the Crusaders came back for the third time in the game.
“I’ve always said we’re a top-five team in the state,” Bellevue coach Kelly Edwards said. “You have to remind yourselves that the good teams are never going to go away, and every team that makes it to state is a quality team. This whole state (tournament), we’ve been up at times, we’ve been down at times. At no point did we ever quit. We showed that today.”
Boys third/fifth: Auburn stumbles in fourth
The defending champs in Class 3A had No. 1 seed Mount Spokane on the ropes. Then Auburn went out and scored just three points in the fourth quarter of its third-fifth place game.
That inability to score down the stretch cost the Trojans, who turned a potential victory into a 60-51 loss to the Wildcats. Mount Spokane (25-2) takes the third-place trophy while Auburn adds a fifth-place finish to its 2022 title.
The Trojans (21-8) erased a five-point deficit at the half with a 20-point third quarter output, taking a 48-39 lead into the final eight minutes. That lead quickly evaporated under the weight of a 20-0 Mount Spokane run through most of the fourth quarter.
The Trojans didn’t make a field goal in the final eight minutes.
Girls third/fifth: Mead drops Arlington
Teryn Gardner made the play when her team needed it most.
The Mead junior buried a clutch three-pointer with 10 seconds left to erase a deficit that had hovered between 10 and 13 points for most of the second half. She scooped in the game-winning shot while being fouled in the Panthers’ 69-67 win over Arlington in the third/fifth-place game.
“We set up plays to get me open and my teammates came in, got it to me and we got the open shot,” Gardner said. “And I knocked them down. We fought back to the end and it was just awesome.”
With just over two and a half minutes to go, Mead (21-4) looked done. Arlington (22-4) built the largest lead of the game at 63-47 midway into the final eight minutes.
The Panthers ended the game on an almost-unbelievable 22-4 run.
Girls fourth/sixth: Stanwood takes sixth
Vivienne Berrett and Oliviyah Edwards put on an early-morning show for the few folks that ventured out to the Dome for the girls fourth/sixth-place trophy game at 8 a.m.
Berrett, a senior, led Stanwood to a 52-45 victory over the Lincoln Abes, scoring 10 of her game-high 24 points over the final 6:36 of the game as the Spartans (21-6) pulled away from a 39-39 tie. Lincoln earned its first trophy since finishing fifth in 2017.
For the Abes, Edwards capped her debut at state with her third double-double in four games. The freshman scored 18 points, grabbed 12 rebounds and blocked three shots. She finished with 55 rebounds — an average of 13.75 boards a game.