The larger portion of this Skyline Spartans boys basketball team has been here before, chasing a title.
Back when they were sixth graders, much of the senior core of a Skyline squad were members of an AAU team that traveled to Spokane and came away with a state title.
With regular season at a close and the playoffs beginning, that core and the prodigal son from that sixth-grade team that returned to the bluff before the school year began have reunited for what could be another championship run. The Spartans already have shown they have the pieces to compete when the postseason begins Thursday.
“We’re all just competitors,” Skyline senior Dylan Reilly said. “Everybody believes their role is important for us to have success. And what’s special to us — most of us went to middle school together at Pine Lake, as well as the feeder program in the sixth grade.”
While Reilly, T.J. Crandall, and Kyler Przybylski moved from middle school directly to Skyline, another of their teammates from that sixth-grade team and Pine Lake moved. Nahmier Robinson came back for his senior season, and brought his sophomore brother Ny’ale along with him.
The reunited group enjoyed immediate success when the season began, and has ridden that momentum all year. Even despite a tough nonconference loss to visiting Tahoma on Saturday, the Spartans are ranked seventh in the state in The Associated Press state poll.
“We came out of the blocks pretty fast,” Skyline coach Josh Martinez said. “And the kids have been working so hard, it’s actually made it easy for us as coaches to do some different things.”
With four starters returning, Martinez already knew his Skyline team would be competitive. With Robinson’s return from Rainier Beach, where Nate Robinson’s elder son played the past three seasons, the Spartans got the added boost from putting a group that had played for years back together.
“I didn’t think it would actually happen,” Reilly said of Robinson’s return to the fold. “But it was a great surprise. He can do pretty much anything on the court. We were all just super excited.”
So was Robinson, actually.
“Me transferring to Skyline, I knew I could help,” Robinson said. “I felt like I needed something new. We won the sixth-grade championship in Spokane. We just picked it back up from there and now we’re creating new memories.”
Skyline split the regular-season series with Mount Si, a team that has made regular appearances in the state championship game over the past several seasons. The second-ranked Wildcats are expected to make another potential run over the next six weeks.
The Spartans believe this group has what it takes to be right there with their KingCo rivals.
“Nahmier came in and really worked himself into a starting position,” Martinez said. “He was coming off the bench at the beginning of the year. He’s just such a dynamic athlete.”
Robinson comes by that athleticism genetically, of course. His father Nate played football and basketball for the Washington Huskies before going on to an 11-season career in the NBA. Grandfather Jacque was the 1982 Rose Bowl and 1985 Orange Bowl MVP for the Huskies before being drafted by the Buffalo Bills and playing a year for the Philadelphia Eagles.
In just the last month, Robinson received a preferred walk-on offer from those same Huskies. Nahmier hasn’t made a choice on where he’ll next go to school once he graduates from Skyline in June.
What he does know is that he’d like to play football and basketball wherever he goes.
“I am planning to do both at the next level,” Nahmier said. “I just love both basketball and football so much. I want to show how versatile I can be.”
Nahmier’s desire has nothing to do with wanting to mimic his father.
“It’s just a coincidence,” Nahmier said.
Robinson’s college decision can wait. Right now, there’s more work to be done at Skyline.
“I really feel like we’re ready for anything,” Robinson said.
He’s not the only one who believes it.
“Dylan Reilly is a 20 (points) and 10 (rebounds) guy who was first-team all-KingCo last season,” Martinez said. “He’s just very steady and a senior captain. This team is so fast, and our hallmark is our full-court trapping defense. You’ve got to have unselfish players who are willing to sacrifice a little bit of their own game to do what we want to do.”
With the familiarity this group has, those sacrifices and the merging of those already at Skyline with the returning Robinsons has been virtually seamless. The only question now is, where will it all end.
This group believes a bookend title, to go with the one from seven years ago, is completely possible.
“That’s obviously the goal,” Reilly said. “But we also don’t like to look too far ahead.”
Maybe talk to them again on the first week of March.