The Auburn Riverside and Auburn boys basketball teams will play today and Saturday in the South Puget Sound League 4A basketball seeding tournament.
The Ravens (9-7 league, 12-8 overall), the fourth-place SPSL North 4A team, will play Todd Beamer (12-4, 14-6) at 11 a.m. Saturday at the Showare Center in Kent. The winner of the game will earn the No. 7 seed into the district tourney, with the loser relegated to the No. 8 seed.
For fifth-place Auburn (8-8, 12-8), which lost to Auburn Riverside 67-65 this past Friday, a contest against Bethel (8-9, 9-10) gets under way at 6 p.m. today, at Bethel High School. The winner will be the No. 9 seed into districts with the loser going in as the No. 10 seed. Auburn will be the home team for the game.
Riverside will come into the game riding an emotional high from beating the Trojans on their home court in the final regular season contest of the year.
After leading 39-34, the Ravens clung to their slim lead and put away their district rival.
Senior Ryan Rogers led the Ravens with 20 points. Rogers also was instrumental in helping to shut down Iszia Johnson, Auburn’s leading scorer on the season. Johnson was held to just 13 points, much less than the 28 points the Auburn junior dropped on Auburn Riverside in their previous matchup.
“Oh, man, it feels great,” Ryan said. “Everybody had a lot of intensity before the game in the locker room. We were pumped, everybody was ready. It feels really good, because of course, they’re our rival. We’re just excited to get the win. We’ve got a spot in the playoffs.
“We had a great game against Auburn last time, they got us by three though,” he continued. “But it was the same game plan as last time, let Zeke (Iszia Johnson) shoot. And just play good D. We knew we had to play good defense, that was the only way we were going to win this game.”
“It feels good,” coach Shawn Killgallon said. “We made a ton of mistakes down the stretch, but they still recovered. But that’s what I’ve been telling them all season. It’s a game of mistakes, it’s 32 minutes of mistakes. But it’s whoever can recover the quickest that usually wins. They did a good job of recovering from the mistakes though, which at times were incredibly stupid and not reflective of this style that we play.
“But it was nice to come in here and get a ‘W’ against our rival and a good team,” Killgallon continued. “We needed one like this.”
Cameron Grad added 19 points for the Ravens and Cole Luckett chimed in with 12 points.
“Another kid that did a good job was Dustin (Hegge),” Kilgallon said. “I thought Dustin played as hard as he possibly could. I had to run him at a one (point guard), and he’s not used to being one. He had to deal with one of the best pressure backcourts around.”
Elsewhere
On the girls side, the No. 1 ranked Auburn Riverside (16-0, 20-0) girls took on the SPSL South 4A champs Bethel (15-1, 16-4) last night, with the winner earning the No. 1 seed into the district tourney. The loser will play the winner of the Kentwood versus Rogers game for the No. 2 and 3 seeds. … Junior post Isia Johnson’s game-high 20 points were not enough to lift the Auburn Trojans past the Kentlake Falcons in a South Puget Sound League North 4A tiebreaker to determine the fourth-and fifth-place teams in the league, this past Tuesday. Despite leading 23-19 at the half, the Trojans (8-9, 9-12) found themselves on the losing end of the 52-47 point contest. The Trojans will play Graham-Kapowsin at 6 p.m. Friday at Thomas Jefferson High School.
The winner of that game will earn the No. 9 seed into the district tourney, with the loser relegated to No.10.
