COLLEGE BASKETBALL: Peninsula men win and advance to NWAC tourney

PORT ANGELES — Officially, it wasn’t a playoff game.

But it had all the atmosphere and intensity of one. Win and move on to the NWAC tournament. Lose and stay home.

The Peninsula College men’s basketball team rode a furious defensive effort to beat Shoreline 84-66 on Wednesday, qualifying for the NWAC tournament as the No. 4 seed out of the North with an 8-6 record. If Shoreline had won, the Dolphins would have gone on to the NWAC tourney instead.

The men put themselves in this position by being unable to win two straight in league play almost all year. It was the 12th straight game for the Pirates alternating between a win and a loss.

“Perspective is everything for us,” said coach Donald Rollman. “These kids were never broken. I get emotional talking about it.”

Rollman was proud of the defensive effort. KeAndre Hunter-Holiday only scored five points, but he pulled down 10 rebounds and guarded Shoreline’s 6-foot-6 DeShawn McFerrin, holding him to six points. It doesn’t show up in the stat sheet, but Hunter-Holiday also single-handedly broke up three Shoreline fast breaks. Isaac Garcia had the tough job to guard Shoreline’s athletic scoring machine, A.J. Boyd, who came in to the game averaging 22. He scored 24 points, but it took him 20 shots to do it.

Jaylin Reed, who led the Pirates with 26 points, nine rebounds and five assists, said it feels great to be going to the tournament after last year’s hiatus. And after Peninsula’s backs were against the wall coming into this game.

He said, “we just gotta be [more] hungry than them’,” he said.

Big first-half run

The game was tight early as the Pirates held a 20-19 lead with 8:30 left in the first half. Peninsula opened up a healthy 33-19 lead by going on a 13-0 run over four minutes, capped by a Reed 3-pointer.

It looked like the Pirates were going into the half with a nice 12-point lead, but the Dolphins scored four points in the final 20 seconds to cut the deficit to 40-32. It felt like the Pirates had dominated the half, but they only held an eight-point lead at the break.

A four-point play by Reed with 18:23 left in the half sparked a big Pirates run. Peninsula went on a 19-6 run to take a commanding 59-38 lead with 14:22 left in the game.

Still, no lead in an NWAC game ever feels truly safe, and Shoreline threw everything it had at the Pirates. Shoreline made a couple of runs, cutting the lead down to 14 or 15 points on four occasions, but that was as close as the Dolphins could get. Every time the Dolphins grabbed the momentum, Peninsula had an answer with a steal or a forced turnover or a clutch 3-pointer.

The final exclamation point came on a fast break with 1:37 left in the game when Reed found Isaiah Sampson on the baseline for a thunderous dunk, giving the Pirates an insurmountable 80-63 lead. Sampson finished with 17 points and two blocks.

Roosevelt Williams Jr. also had a great game, scoring 24 points on 10-for-12 shooting. He also shot 4-for-4 from the free-throw line and had four assists.

The referees let the teams play, barely calling any fouls. The Pirates only shot eight free throws for the whole game while Shoreline shot seven.

Former Port Angeles Roughrider Gary Johnson Jr. got in the game in the final minute and hit a 3-pointer.

The Pirates, 16-10 overall, will find out Sunday afternoon who they will play in the opening round of the NWAC tournament.

Peninsula 83, Shoreline 66

S32 34 — 66

PC40 43 — 83

Shoreline (66) — Boyd 24, Brown 12, Stepney 11, Opany 8, McFerrin 6, Perkins 5.

Peninsula (83) — Reed 26, Williams 24, Sampson 17, Hunter-Holiday 5, Garcia 3, Harris 3, Johnson 3, Dean 2.