Sanchez buoys
Top-Hi with treys

By SCOTT SANDSBERRY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

Most of the current Toppenish boys basketball players were in diapers or not yet born in March 1992, the last time the Wildcats reached the state tournament. That year they reached the finals, and watching the game film of that game — a nail-biting, three-point loss to a towering Lynden Lions squad — was how the Wildcats spent Wednesday morning in mental preparation for their Class 2A opener against the tournament’s tallest team, Mark Morris.

Reserve forward Mario Sanchez’s uncle, Marcelino Osorio, played on that ’91-92 team, and Sanchez was watching for things his uncle had told him about. He watched with an intensity that struck his coach, Joe Mesplie.

“We were showing it on the wall, and he literally was standing, maybe five feet from the wall, absolutely focused, watching it,” Mesplie said. “When he started hitting those shots, in my mind I went back to him watching that film, and that total focus.”

Sanchez came off the bench to hit three of the Wildcats’ nine 3-pointers, ending what Mesplie said had been a lengthy slump.

“He’s been kind of in a slump all year long,” Mesplie said. “When to come out of a slump would be at the state tournament, I guess.”

And he did it against a team the undersized Wildcats were a pronounced underdog against; the Monarchs have two 6-foot-9 posts and a 6-7 forward. Sanchez recalled well his father’s advice.

“He always told me to block out and never give up,” said Sanchez, who admitted to being as surprised as anyone else when he hit his trio of 3-pointers on just five attempts.

“I’m surprised I was (hitting them),” he said. “As a big man, they don’t think I can shoot 3-pointers.”

Of course, that’s “big man” in quotation marks. Sanchez is listed generously at 6-2. On Mark Morris, that’s a guard.