Grandview players hoist their third-place trophy after the Greyhounds beat Chimacum 69-46 Saturday in the Class 2A state tournament at the SunDome.   JEFF HALLER/Yakima Herald-Republic View all photos for this story.

Andrews scores 18 as Grandview beats
Chimacum 69-46; Cowboys' Gray held to 9

By PAUL SHUGAR
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

After game after game of offensive ineptitude, the points finally came for the Grandview boys basketball team and they wouldn’t stop.

Managing only 23 points in their semifinal loss to Quincy, the Greyhounds exploded for a 69-46 victory against Chimacum and third place in the 2A state tournament Saturday in the SunDome.

The win gave the Cowboys sixth place and their first trophy since a fifth-place showing in 1979.

Grandview takes third after winning the state championship in 2002 and now has placed in all 10 of its state-tournament entries.

Guard Anthony Andrews led the hot offensive night that ended with four Grandview players in double figures. He finished with 18 points on 5-for-9 shooting from 3-point range as the Greyhounds finished with 30 points on treys as a team.

“It was pretty big for me to come out and hit that first shot,” said Andrews, who hit Grandview’s first basket of the game from 3-point range. “That allowed me to get in a rhythm for the rest of the game.”

Any kind of offensive flow was missing in Grandview’s 31-23 loss Thursday in the semifinals. The Greyhounds didn’t score a point for the entire third quarter and went 16 minutes and 17 seconds at one point without slipping the ball through the twine.

All that changed with Grandview equaling Thursday’s point total when Andrews’ 3-pointer put his team ahead 23-14 with 2:30 remaining before halftime. The Greyhounds’ first basket after the break would have been enough to clinch a victory against the Jackrabbits.

“It was a nice finish because we’ve been struggling offensively and finding other ways to win,” Grandview coach Scott Parrish said. “The other night it just caught up with us.”

Luckily for the Greyhounds, playing four games in four days also had caught up with the Cowboys’ leading scorer, sophomore guard Steven Gray, who just missed a double-double with nine points and 10 rebounds.

But after scoring 87 points in the first three games, including a 36-point night that was one point shy of the tournament record to kick things off, Gray looked tired Saturday. He was 0 of 4 from the field for the first half and didn’t hit his first shot until there was 6:11 left in the fourth quarter.

“It’s tough playing four games in four days and I was wore down,” Gray said. “I have to give the players in the championship game a lot of credit.
They’re in top of the line shape.”

With Gray struggling, forward Mike Casal carried the offensive load with 19 points and was the only Cowboy in double figures. But Chimacum couldn’t get anything going in the first half, shooting 26.3 percent from the field to go into halftime down 30-18.

Andrews already had hit three 3-pointers by the break and had 11 of his game-high 18 points to help build the big lead early.

From there the Greyhounds just cruised in the second half with Andrews and wing Adam Dion, who finished with 10 points, adding three more 3-pointers. Senior center Chris Mejia worked inside for 14 points and Cordero Cisneros rounded out the Grandview players in double figures with 12.

After shooting 7 of 42 (16.6 percent) from the field against Quincy, the Greyhounds shot 19 of 41 (46.3 percent) to wash the poor semifinal performance from their memories. But that didn’t mean Grandview players were planning on watching Saturday’s championship game and wondering what could have been.

“It’s a little too hard to watch that game,” Andrews said.