YAKIMA — The Lynden Christian boys basketball team dispensed with the dramatics this time around.
A year after climbing out of a 16-point halftime hole to rally for their seventh championship, the top-seeded Lyncs got the comeback out of the way early.
Saturday night they erased a 13-point deficit after the first quarter to comfortably defeat No. 5 King’s 57-47 in a rematch of last year’s final.
It’s the eighth title for Lynden Christian with six of them under the concrete dome, and the first time the program has won back-to-back crowns.
The Lyncs knew the recipe from last year, when then-rookie head coach Tim Zylstra calmly preached doing what you do.
“With being down 16 last year we really thought that, ‘We’ve been here before,’” Lynden Christian point guard Tyler Sipma said. “Coach Z smiled at us at halftime and said, ‘Guys, we’re down five, we just need to relax a little bit.’ He knew we’d be OK, and he gave us all that mindset that we’d be good and in the second half we came out on that run and never looked back.”
They also never let the Knights rediscover the rhythm they had in a 21-point first quarter.
“On the defensive end, I’m really proud of the way we stepped up,” Zylstra said. “We had to switch some things, but again the kids had run some of that and were comfortable with it.”
It took two-and-a-half quarters for King’s to get its next 21 points, and by that time, Lynden Christian was well under control.
The Knights’ standout tandem of sophomore guard Cam Hiatt and junior wing Nick Linhardt combined for 14 points in the opening quarter. They mustered just 12 together the rest of the way, hounded by foul trouble and LC’s stifling defense.
“I want to shout out to Dawson Bouma,” Sipma said. “He locked Cam Hiatt up all game. Hats off to Cam. I’ve played against him now in two championships. He’s special but Dawson did a great job not letting him get any looks in the second half.”
After scoring just eight in the first period, the Lyncs knocked down 56% of their field-goal attempts in the second half to offset a 30% clip before the break.
They shaved eight points off the Knights’ lead heading into halftime, and took a three-point going in the fourth.
“On offense end we said attack every time and we got them in foul trouble,” Zylstra said. “We said we’re finishing at the rim and our shots began to drop.”
That plan meant a heavy dose of junior post Jeremiah Wright, named the tournament MVP after racking up 15 points and 14 rebounds in the final, and Sipma, who matched Wright for team-high honors while carving up the King’s defense with drives to the basket and staving off his own foul trouble.
“He’s a dude,” Zylstra said of his point guard. “The kid loves basketball, he works his tail off and this is the result of what you can do with hard work.”
Lane Dykstra added 11 points for the Lyncs (26-2), sinking 3 of 4 three-pointers, and Bouma paired his defensive work with nine points.
Hiatt led all scorers with 16 points for the Knights but made just 1 of 8 three-pointers, and the left-handed Linhardt had 10 before fouling out midway through the fourth.
This was the third straight meeting in the final for the schools, and the fourth in the past eight tournaments with each team winning twice.