Second-half surge leads Tigers over Mountaineers 62-52

Karsen Denault paces Napavine with 21 points

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The Rainier High School boys basketball team has been hoping that the day it could kick down the door and knock off one of the Central 2B League powerhouse teams would come as the Mountaineers neared full health.

But they’re back to the drawing board after Napavine prevailed 62-52 in Rainier Saturday, Jan. 25. Karsen Denault, who scored 30 points against Rainier on Dec. 18 in a 70-51 win, hurt the Mountaineers once again with a game-high 21 points.

With the loss, Rainier falls to 0-5 against the top three teams in the league this season in Napavine, Adna and Toledo. Head coach Ben Sheaffer said the biggest difference between his squad and the three teams above them is belief.

“These guys have never beaten Napavine, and I think that’s a mental barrier. I think we can play with those guys, but we just sometimes have little mental lapses,” he said. “We’re not going to overreact here. We just need to kick the door down at some point and beat one of these teams. We’re close. We just haven’t been able to put a whole game together.”

For the second time in as many games against Napavine, Sheaffer was forced to call a timeout in the game’s opening minutes due to an early bombardment from the Tigers. Beckett Landram and Denault each cashed a triple, and Denault stole the ball and laid it in to make it 8-0 Napavine just 61 seconds into the contest.

It was a near mirror image of the first few minutes of the first matchup, but instead of falling behind 15-3, Rainier quickly got back into the game with a pair of 3-pointers by Peyton Sheaffer. The Mountaineers answered every Tigers bucket with one of their own and trailed 21-18 after one.

Jake Meldrum chipped away at the lead with his own basket from deep, and Sheaffer gave Rainier its first lead of the night just before halftime thanks to a trey. The Mountaineers led the Tigers 30-28 at halftime, with Sheaffer scoring 11 in the first 16 minutes.

“We like when he’s aggressive. He’s one of our best shooters, and we would like him to be a little more assertive out there,” Ben Sheaffer said of his son.

Coming out of the locker room, Napavine deployed a full-court pressure that put the Mountaineers offense in a straitjacket and forced numerous turnovers before the ball passed halfcourt.

“It worked for a little while and helped us get going energy-wise, and then we went away from it for a while because they started hitting big shots,” Napavine coach Eric Hersman said of the full-court press.

Peyton Sheaffer kept Rainier within striking distance in the third quarter, scoring every point for the Mountaineers in the period. But their turnovers outnumbered their point tally, and Napavine’s offense also came alive in the third, including a 10-3 burst over the final three minutes to take a 48-38 lead into the fourth.

“We just executed better. We tried getting the ball into the high post, we stopped settling for bad shots, and we started to be a bit more disciplined,” Hersman said. “It worked out.”

Rainier was without starter Josh Meldrum for most of the second half after he felt pain in the same foot that he broke in early December. The Mountaineers were without one of their quicker guards who could break free from defensive pressure.

In the fourth quarter, the Tigers continued to maintain a double-digit lead, with a triple from Hudson Chambers serving as a dagger in the 62-52 victory. Napavine (15-2, 12-1 C2BL)  remains tied for first place in the league with Adna (15-3, 12-1 C2BL), and the two heavyweights will duke it out for the top spot Wednesday, Jan. 29 at 7 p.m.

Rainier (10-6, 7-6 C2BL) remains locked into fourth place with three league games left in the regular season. The Mountaineers will visit Elma in a non-league bout Monday, Jan. 27 at 7 p.m. before heading to Morton-White Pass on Wednesday night at 7 p.m.