South Puget Sound League’s north division team, the Mt. Rainier Rams boys took on a south division team, the Todd Beamer Titans for a playoff placement game. The game was the sixth and last game of the day at Auburn High School, Saturday night, February 11th. Mt Rainier came into the game with an 11-5 conference record, 14-8 overall. Beamer’s record was at 12-3 conference and 13-7 overall. This was not an elimination game; it would only determine what team they would play in the next round.

In the first quarter Mt Rainier took control of the game from the start. Beamer made a lot of bad passes which would lead to turnovers and easy baskets for Mt Rainier. The quarter ended at 23-15, Mt Rainier leading.

The second quarter was pretty much the same. It looked like both teams were trying to do too much which had them at times playing out of control. There were lots of fast breaks for both teams yet Mt Rainier was still able to increase their lead to 13 points at the half.

As in most games with good teams momentum can change the flow of the game and now it was Beamer’s turn. Starting the third quarter Beamer put on a scoring run of seven straight unanswered points, cutting Mt Rainier’s lead to six points at the 6:42 mark. So what was it that Beamer coach Winston Bell told his team in the locker room at half time? “I just reassured them that we are prepared for anything they can do.”

Mt Rainier’s coach Brian Johnson also commented on Beamer's third quarter scoring run. “We came out and were kind of lackadaisical”, he said. “We were happy with our first half performance but took the foot off the gas. We stopped pushing the ball, we stopped attaching, and we stopped trapping to start the second half. We were just sleepwalking. When they got close we did a good job of fighting through it and then we got a couple layups and got back into our flow and got through it. We can’t have those lapses.”

In the fourth quarter Beamer put together some more scoring plays, again cutting Mt Rainier lead to only six points, but now there was only 5:09 to go in the game. The Beamer fans were certainly enjoying this, believing there might be a chance of overtaking Mt Rainier and go on for the win. The run was short lived as Mt Rainier got back to what initially gave them their lead.

Needing to get their hands on the ball to score Beamer had to start fouling. Free throws were shot by Mt Rainier which extended their lead to ten points with 2:17 to go. The game ended with a twelve point difference.

All night Beamer was playing catch up. “Usually we handle pressure and tonight we didn’t handle it very well”, Beamer’s coach Bell said. “We knew they (Mt Rainier) were guard heavy, in the last week we’ve seen them twice. We knew they depend heavily on their guards, somewhat like we do. They are going to trap at every chance they have to rush us. For some reason our guys were not ready for that pressure. I feel like we have everything for every situation and we’re prepared to win. We just need to go out and do a better job at executing what we do.”

Mt Rainier coach Johnson said after the game, “We did a great job of pressuring them to get a lot of turnovers early. We sped them up and we did a good job early of getting a lot of turnovers and caused a lot of problems in them and broke up their flow which we wanted. We didn’t want them to be comfortable and we did a good job of making them feel uncomfortable and they were throwing the ball all around the gym and we didn’t want them running any offense. We wanted to use our teams speed even though they have some speed over there.”

The leading scorers for the game were Mt Rainier's Adrian Davis who lead all scorers with 25, Caden Rowland had 19 and Jamil Wilson-Jones added 14. For Beamer Thomas Rhodes had 24 and Roosevelt Jones added 18. For the game Mt Rainier made 5 three pointers while Beamer only made two. Also, there was a big difference in free throws as Mt Rainier made 16 of 23 while Beamer made only 7 of 14.

The West Central District III basketball playoffs begin on Tuesday the 14th. Mt. Rainier will play at Central Kitsap High School and Beamer will play at Federal Way High School. Both games are scheduled for a 7 pm start time.

To follow the West Central District III playoff brackets check out their website at: www.wcd3.org/Athletics.htm