For days, Grandview’s coaches had been preaching to their players about the inside-outside game. Until you show you can take the ball inside, so the theory goes, the outside shots won’t be open.

Grandview's Rogi Fajardo takes the ball past Chelan's Brett Linehan during the first half of the Tourneytown.com Shootout on Monday.   SARA GETTYS/Yakima Herald-Republic View the Shootout photo galleries.

In a demonstration of that concept eerily reminiscent of another Grandview performance five years ago on the same SunDome court — yes, that championship season — the Greyhounds routed a good Chelan team 68-42 in the fifth annual Tourneytown.com Shootout.

They went inside, kicked the ball outside ... from where seemingly every Greyhound shot went inside the basket.

“When we run our offense, it opens things up,” said Greyhound junior C.J. Lopez, who led the way with 7-for-9 shooting on 3-pointers and a game-high 21 points. “That helps a lot when our offense works the ball inside and then out. That gets me in a groove.”

Lopez got into that groove quickly, with three treys in a 13-3 run of the opening quarter that turned a 7-6 Chelan edge into a 21-12 Greyhound lead. Then, in a 2 1/2-minute span of the third period, he and senior A.J. Valencia each sank a pair of 3-pointers, part of a five-minute, 17-0 Grandview run during which the Goats — clearly flustered by the Greyhounds’ defensive pressure — missed 11 straight shots.

“We weren’t ready for that kind of pressure,” Chelan coach Joe Harris said. “Their quickness was something we hadn’t seen all year, to a man — even though we’d played some teams that were pretty quick. We started playing tentative, and that plays right into their game. And it all snowballed.”

Grandview's Rogi Fajardo, center, and Adrian Perez, center foreground, struggle for the ball while Chelan's Bill Buckingham, left, flinches from an injury during the second half.   SARA GETTYS/Yakima Herald-Republic

With the Greyhounds’ shots falling (13-for-24 on 3’s) and their quick hands working (10 steals), it was easy to overlook something perhaps just as impressive: They actually outrebounded the much taller Goats (7-5), whose front line went 6-foot-6, 6-5, 6-2. In fact, four Chelan starters towered above the tallest player in the Grandview lineup, 6-foot Nick Sears. And who was the game’s leading rebounder? Sears, with 10 — and he had a couple of blocks to go with that.

“Their guys battled,” Harris said. “They got to a lot of the loose balls, and that’s what we’re used to doing.”

It’s also what Grandview is used to doing, but the Greyhounds hadn’t lived up to their own fiery reputation in back-to-back losses to Prosser and Wapato over the weekend after opening the season 8-0.

“That was a wakeup call when we lost those games,” Lopez said.

“I think we really thought we were doing good, that no one could beat us,” said Valencia, who finished with 18 points on 7-for-11 shooting. “Then we came out played around and guys were bringing their ‘A’ game against us.

“It was kind of good that happened. It makes you want to work harder and not think you’re going to beat everybody just because you’re 7-0 or whatever.”

Grandview coach Scott Parrish had been clearly frustrated with his team’s performances in the back-to-back losses — though he noted that Wapato is “the best team in our league, hands-down.” But he was glad to see his Greyhounds (9-2) get the message.

“Our posts are really good at catching the ball and kicking it back out for guys who are open outside,” Parrish said. “We’ve been kind of yelling at the guys about not using that offensive movement, not getting the ball inside. Today we had that inside presence, and it opened things up on the 3-point line.”

If the Greyhounds keep that ball movement going, it’s easy to imagine them making another deep tournament run. And Harris — whose freshman son, Joe, led the Goats with 16 points and seven rebounds — won’t mind not having to face them in postseason play. The Goats, Grandview’s victim in that 2002 championship game, are down in the 1A ranks now. The Greyhounds are still in 2A — and, just maybe, still a contender.

“Grandview,” Harris said with a nod, “is very good.”