Orcas hangs on to beat Friday Harbor

You wouldn’t have expected anything different from the Orcas and Friday Harbor boys’ basketball teams.

What would have been a near-miraculous comeback by the Friday Harbor Wolverines Jan. 8 fell one point short as the Orcas Vikings held on for dear life in a 51-50 win. It was yet another classic in a long line of teeth-gnashing battles between these two island rivals.

Orcas coach Gregg Sasan, who tortured himself the night before the game by watching the videotape of Orcas’ one-point loss to the Wolverines last season, nevertheless loves these Friday Harbor-Orcas battles.

With the Vikings hanging on to a one-point lead in the final few seconds, Sasan called a timeout. He said he didn’t discuss a lot of strategy with his kids. He urged them to savor the moment, instead. “I told them, ‘isn’t this great? Look at the score. Isn’t this exciting?’”

It was an interesting clash of Friday Harbor’s size versus Orcas’ speed. The Wolverines contained the Vikings running style fairly well, as Orcas only had three or four fast-break baskets in the whole game. However, the Vikings also handled the Wolverines’ size, as Orcas did an effective job on the boards.

The Vikings had a 50-38 lead with under five minutes left in the contest, but of course, nothing ever comes easy when these two teams meet. Behind two three-pointers by Brett Percich and another four points by Nathan Smith, the Wolverines went on a 12-1 run down the stretch and nearly caught Orcas.

Friday Harbor held a narrow lead early in the game, but Orcas took control of the game late in the first half. Josh Gage scored five points and Noah Cline tallied four as the Vikings went on a 9-0 run for a 24-19 lead at the half. Friday harbor coach Dave Anderson thought the 9-0 run before the half was huge for the Vikings.

After Wolverines power forward Danny Johnson went out of the game because he banged his head, the Vikings took advantage and went on another 11-3 run late in the third and early in the fourth to build up their biggest lead at 45-32.

Orcas still had a healthy 12-point lead with about 4:30 left when Percich hit his second three-pointer of the fourth period. Smith and Johnson, who had come back in the game, scored two baskets, and Percich added another three with 1:45 left to make it 51-48. Orcas turned the ball over with 1:10 left, and Smith was fouled with 56 seconds remaining in the game. He made both of his free throws to draw the Wolverines to within one point.

In the final 40 seconds, Friday Harbor only had four team fouls, meaning the Wolverines had to foul three times just to get into the penalty, so they could force Orcas to take free throws. By the time the Wolverines got their seventh foul, there was only five seconds left. Anderson said the Viking players are so quick, his players had trouble reaching them to make the intentional fouls.

With five seconds left, Orcas missed the front end of a one-and-one, but Saul Sasan nearly rebounded it as he was headed out-of-bounds. He tried to call time out, but the referee ruled he had stepped out-of-bounds. That gave the Wolverines the ball with 3.8 seconds left.

Friday Harbor got the ball to the frontcourt and had a play set up, but the ball was bobbled, forcing a wild shot at the rim at the buzzer.

The Vikings had balanced scoring, with five players scoring at least eight points. Noah Cline had his best game ever, scoring 12 and Josh Gage had 11.

Smith led the Wolverines with 14, while Percich had 13.

— Pierre LaBossiére is sports editor of islandssounder.com and The Islands’ Sounder. He can be reached at (360) 378-4191 ext. 20 or email.

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