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| Published March 6, 2004 :: Home 
Roger |
No True
Enemy in Title Game The first thing David Pendergraft wanted to do was congratulate his falled comrade. Chris Faidley, the super shooter from King's, had broken the Class 1A state tournament career scoring record in a semifinal loss to N.W. Christian. "He's a great player and a good friend of mine," Pendergraft said Friday night in the SunDome. "That's a tremendous accomplishment." From there, then, you get the idea that Saturday night's championship game has the potential for anything, perhaps, except bad blood. There is the favorite, Brewster, a team so good that the term "shock the world" has been used by multiple coaches here in reference to the proper description of a Bears defeat. There is the underdog, N.W. Christian, whose resume is as unimposing as Brewster's is intimidating. Not only had the Crusaders never won a Class 1A state game before Wednesday, they had never played one. Pendergraft and his Bears, of course, have won their last seven state games, 16 overall and 54 of their last 55 dating back to 2002, with the only loss coming to Class 3A state semifinalist West Valley during this season's Tourneytown.com Shootout. And if anyone needs hard evidence, there is this: Brewster beat N.W. Christian by 26 in a regional title game last weekend. Blood? A small pocket of it was visible beneath Pendergraft's left eye -- a remnant of the broken nose he suffered Wednesday night -- but it could hardly be considered bad. "I think we might have worn them down a little in the third and fourth quarters," the 6-foot-6, Gonzaga-bound senior said. "But they've played really well ehre. Evgen though they didn't have any (state tournament) experience, they really look like they know what they're doing." As Brewster did in its 51-28 dusting of Freeman in Friday's second semifinal, a game in which the Bears had more than their typically ravenous appetite for victory as motivation. The game before Brewster's aforementioned triumph over NWC, Freeman had come within 59-55 of shocking the world. It was the Bears' closest brush with defeat all season, save for the West Valley game. "That one was just ... a little too close," Brewster coach Tim Taylor said after his businesslike team could be heard whooping it up in its locker room. "This time the kids wanted a little more separation. "Also they're excited because they're where they've wanted to be and where they've expected to be." And where anyone who has given Washington high school basketball even a cursory glance has expected them to be. As for scouting reports, Taylor and N.W. Christian's Ray Ricks both were gracious and insightful. "They're so good," Ricks said, "and you don't realize how good they really are until you play them, because otherwise there's no way to understand their speed. Everybody talks about Pendergraft, of course, but their guards, (Michael) Taylor, (Hawkins) Gebbers and (Ryne) Phillips are so quick and fast. They're just so solid all the way around." Said Tim Taylor, Michael's father, "We've played them, of course, and we watched them (Friday in NWC's 44-35 win over King's). They're big, they're quick, they're strong and they're fast. I think they're going to play basketball with us. They're capable." Of winning? "We're not trying to be the better team," said Ricks. "We're just hoping to have the better game tomorrow night." And if they do, the result might compare from a high school hoops perspective with the U.S. Olympic hockey team's upset of the Soviets, a shock-the-world victory that has been re-created in the movie "Miracle." Brewster and N.W. Christian both watched the film in recent days. Both liked it. "I told my guys," Taylor said, "that in our situation you have to consider yourself playing the role of the Russians." Except the Bears aren't nearly that unlikeable. So if Saturday's title game contains other elements of that historic athletic endeavor, including an overwhelming underdog, it thankfully does not have all of them. It doesn't have bad blood.
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