PORT ANGELES — Port Angeles produced its finest half of basketball thus far and caged the Centralia Tigers 74-58 in a nonleague boys basketball contest.
Five Roughriders rained down 11 3-point baskets on Centralia in the first half, led by the 6 for 6 performance of 6-5 senior guard Luke Angevine.
“I’ve never done that before,” Angevine marveled after Wednesday’s game. “My teammates got me some open looks and I knocked them down.”
Angevine finished with a team-high 25 points, and added another 3 for good measure in the fourth quarter for seven in the game.
“He just played with confidence,” head coach Kasey Ulin said.
“He wasn’t thinking, he was just going out and playing. If you are constantly reacting to people you aren’t going to be as effective and tonight Luke was in rhythm.”
Angevine felt the whole team was in rhythm in the first two periods.
“The first half was the most solid basketball we’ve played all year,” Angevine said.
Port Angeles (2-1, 5-3) forced eight first quarter turnovers in pushing to a 26-6 lead after one frame and kept at it in the second, opening up a 48-21 advantage at halftime.
“Our key was to have a great defensive mindset,” Ulin said.
“We are a defensive basketball team, this is a defensive program and we want to be great defensively every night and have our offense come from that. “We were able to accomplish that in the first quarter giving up six points.”
Ulin has said his team has focused on playing from the inside-out offensively, in a bid to boost the confidence of sophomore posts Liam Clark and Garrett Edwards.
Against Centralia’s 2-3 zone, the Riders did some of that as Clark got six of his 12 points in the first quarter, flashing to the open space in the middle of the paint and taking the ball strong to the hole.
But it was Port Angeles’ ball movement and positioning against that 2-3 zone that led to open look after open look from 3-point range.
“They have a pretty big team, so I think we tried to space them out on the perimeter and get their bigs moving,” Ulin said.
“For us, inside-out, or outside-in, our success comes from spacing and ball movement. Cut hard, keep good spacing, let the ball move and we get pretty good shots.
“In the first half our spacing, movement and execution was the best its been all year. We shot the ball well and the kids got pretty confident. It was ball movement, spacing, all the things we preach were really evident.”
Edwards and sophomore guard Kyle Benedict also hit double digits for the Riders, scoring 11 and 12 points respectively.
Edwards has been strong in recent contests and Benedict played well in place of senior Noah McGoff, out with a sprained ankle.
“He’s coming along,” Ulin said of Benedict.
“He had an [ankle] injury that he’s been dealing with since the Klahowya game. Now his confidence is there and Kyle can play. He can shoot it, penetrate, he still needs to come along some defensively, but he could be an X-factor for us.”
A play in the third quarter symbolized what Ulin wants to see from his team. Senior guard Grayson Peet deflected a Centralia inbounds pass out to Benedict who then ran the floor and found Edwards with a perfectly timed bounce pass during a 3-on-1 fast break. Edwards was fouled while hitting the layup, sank his free throw and the Riders’ lead moved to 55-31.
Angevine has appreciated the help from an able group of underclassmen.
“They’ve been huge,” he said of Clark and Edwards. “They are always reliable, we can dump the ball down in the post and be confident we will get a basket.
“And Kyle is solid, he’s helped us a lot this year. And hopefully Noah will be back soon.”
Port Angeles also did a good job defensively on the Tigers’ high-scoring Hodges Bailey. Bailey was held to just eight first-half points, and 14 of his 26 points came with the game well out of reach in the fourth quarter.
“He was frustrated, he had to work,” Ulin said of Bailey. “Grayson [Peet] does an amazing job defensively on most scorers under 6-3.
“And he was a big part of why Bailey was frustrated.”
Forks-born coaches
The coaching contest matched Ulin’s Riders with Centralia’s Ron Brown, a winner of more than 700 games and a WIAA Hall of Famer. Both are Forks High School graduates. And Ulin almost went to Centralia to play for Brown.
“Coach Brown graduated from Forks with my grandpa,” Ulin said.
“Back in high school we went to a team camp at Centralia and I stayed at his house. I almost went to Centralia. I was thinking about it, but yeah, we’ve known Coach Brown for years and he’s a class act all the way.”
Next Up
Port Angeles will host a holiday basketball tournament Thursday and Friday, Dec. 29-30.
Forks (6-1) will face Longview’s R.A. Long (3-2) at 5:15 p.m. in the opener Thursday, while the Riders will host Rochester (3-5) in the 7 p.m. nightcap.
The winners and losers of those contests will meet next Friday, setting up the potential for a game between Forks and Port Angeles.
Port Angeles 74, Centralia 58
Centralia 6 15 12 25— 58
Port Angeles 26 22 10 16 — 74
Centralia (58) — Bailey 26, Edwards 14, Ashmore 12, Pertzborn 4, Trevino 2.
Port Angeles (74) — Angevine 25, Benedict 12, Clark 12, Edwards 11, Peet 6, Borde 5, Joslin 3, Shamp, Long.
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Sports reporter/columnist Michael Carman can be contacted at 360-417-3525 or at mcarman@peninsuladailynews.com.
Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News Port Angeles’ Easton Joslin, right, drives past Centralia’s Hodges Bailey in the fourth quarter on Wednesday in Port Angeles.
