TACOMA — Conditioning work. No fun until suddenly, it is.
“At the time, it was horrible,” Mountlake Terrace senior Chris Meegan said. “But now we realize, ‘Oh, OK, so we have to go play four days in a row?’ That’s what this all was for.”
The No. 6 Hawks advanced past the No. 14 North Thurston Rams at the Class 3A boys’ basketball state tournament at the Tacoma Dome, 58-53 on Wednesday. Mountlake Terrace will take on No. 5 O’Dea on Thursday in the quarterfinals. Same time (3:45 p.m.), same place.
The Hawks (19-6) sprinted every which way. They even sprinted to convene at the half while North Thurston (18-9) filed slowly off the court. Even when things weren’t going well, they kept moving.
“We started off slow, had a warming-up period,” sophomore Rayshaun Connor said. “But once we attacked the middle, that’s how we got a lot of open shots.”
The Hawks couldn’t take advantage of a chilly start for the Rams and never led by more than five, even as it took North Thurston several minutes to get on the scoresheet. Rebounding was a problem, particularly early. North Thurston had the 19-13 first-half advantage there.
“Rebound, push and defend. Those have been our goals all season,” Meegan said. “Really we failed on two of those, but we succeeded on pushing, so we ended up winning the game.”
North Thurston’s plan shifted to letting 6-foot-5 senior forward Thad TenKley go to work. TenKley’s 16 points led both teams in the first half, as did his five defensive rebounds.
“You can’t guard him,” the North Thurston fan section chanted, and for a while they had a point.
Meegan matched that pace as well as anyone. He kept restoring the Hawks’ lead, draining a trio of second-quarter threes. Svayjeet Singh added one more for a 29-25 Mountlake Terrace advantage at the midway point.
Connor, who hit 4 of 5 three-point attempts, turned in back-to-back threes off the bench to help the Hawks keep pace in the second half, then another that looked like a dagger with 6:15 left in the game.
“It feels big,” Connor said of the experience. “I was a little nervous in the beginning. After I hit my first shot, the nerves just wore off.”
But TenKley heated up again and got North Thurston within one with four minutes left. He finished with 25 points and nine rebounds.
“Maybe in the middle of the season, that would have been a completely different game,” Meegan said. “But we’re going to continue to progress and hopefully have a chance at the championship.”
Seniors Meegan, who finished with a game-high six assists to go with 15 points, Zaveon Jones (seven points, eight rebounds) and Andrew Delgadillo, plus junior Jaxon Dubiel (12 points, five rebounds), had been charged with preparing the first-timers such as Connor for the “completely different atmosphere” of the playoffs.
Mountlake Terrace, the Class 3A Northwest District champions, opened up a six-point lead before North Thurston’s final push. Jackson Lusk closed it to three with less than a minute to go.
“That last sigh was just …,” Meegan exhaled deeply. “I just felt all the tension in my body leave.”