CBC men win to join Hawks women in next weekend’s NWAC championship semifinals

Columbia Basin College men’s basketball coach Anthony Owens struggled to keep his voice last week during the Northwest Athletic Conference men’s basketball championship tournament.

Owens had to yell out instructions to his team, and the atmosphere at Cheryl Holden Court at the CBC Student Recreation Center — where the tournament is being held — has been loud and boisterous.

Turns out, Owens needs his voice to hang on for one more week.

CBC used a deep bench and tremendous defensive pressure on Sunday to beat Southwestern Oregon 81-70 in a men’s quarterfinal game, giving the Hawks a berth into next Saturday’s semifinals against Bellevue College.

Those semifinals will be at CBC too.

“I’m going to have to drink tea again this week (to help my voice),” said Owens. “But I’d rather be drinking tea than not playing.”

Ta’Veus Randle will agree with Owens.

The 6-foot-3 freshman from Belgrade, Mont., came off of the bench for the Hawks to score a game-high 29 points.

It was the second straight game that Randle had come off of the bench to help CBC win.

And it’s a role that he loves.

“Anyone on our team can have a hot night. We never get mad about playing time,” said Randle. “We all just support each other.”

Owens uses his team sometimes in waves, sending out a whole team of substitutes onto the floor if he feels the situation calls for it.

That happened on Sunday. Just a few minutes into the contest and the Hawks trailing 4-0, Owens made wholesale changes.

“I didn’t like the way we looked in warmups. And I didn’t like the way we started the game,” he said.

It worked. The Hawks trailed 6-0 before they went on a 10-3 run to right the ship.

In fact, CBC’s bench outscored SWOCC’s 67-26 for the game.

But it took to the end of the first half for the Hawks to start taking control of the contest — a 9-0 run — a 3-point play by Randle, a 3-point field goal by Randle, and a 3 by Lawson Vella.

That turned a 31-30 deficit with 1:33 to play in the half into a 39-31 Hawks lead.

The Lakers would never recover, as CBC held the lead for the rest of the contest.

Not that SWOCC didn’t take a shot at CBC.

The Lakers had one last run in them, cutting the Hawks’ lead to 70-62 with 4:35 to play.

But CBC finished out the game with an 11-8 run to win.

Randle scored 5 points in the run, and Jayden Martinez added 4 points.

Defensively, the Hawks’ swarming pressure forced the Lakers into 17 turnovers that they turned into 16 points.

“We were concerned about the 3,” said Martinez, a Chiawana graduate who scored 12 points. “So we had to run them off the line. We love to full-court press .”

Owens liked this matchup for his team.

“The game plan was to pressure them into turnovers,” he said. “They had one ball handler, they had a big guy. So we were trying to disrupt them.”

For the second consecutive game, CBC (22-6) had five players in double-figure scoring. Besides Randle and Martinez, Teagan Hoard had 11 points, while Javon Handcox and Vella added 10 each.

Logan Prince had 22 points for the Lakers, who finish the season with a 19-12 record.

BELLEVUE 94, TACOMA 79: The Bulldogs had three players score at least 21 points en route to advancing to the semifinals.

Prophet Johnson led the way for Bellevue (21-9) with 30 points and 9 rebounds. Bishop Tosi added 21 points and 10 rebounds, while teammate Owen Moriarity had 21 points, 7 rebounds and 4 assists.

Parker Androy scored 25 points for Tacoma, which ended its season at 12-15.

NEXT SATURDAY’S SEMIFINALS: The men’s and women’s tournaments are down to the final four.

So there will be four games on Saturday at CBC, with the Hawks women opening play at 1 p.m. against Green River in one semifinal.

Peninsula and Lane will meet in the other women’s semifinal at 3 p.m.

On the men’s side, Clackamas takes on Everett at 5 p.m.; while CBC plays Bellevue in the other semifinal at 7 p.m.

The championship games will take place on Sunday, with the women’s game at 2 p.m., and the men’s title game set for 4:45 p.m.

High school basketball

You’d think we’d be done with high school basketball after the state championships were completed a few weekends ago.

But there are still all-star games to be played — at least three of them involving athletes from the Mid-Columbia.

Those would be the S-R Showcase, the WIBCA state all-star game, and the SWX Classic.

First one up in the S-R Showcase, which will be held Tuesday night at Lewis & Clark High School in Spokane.

The game, which is put on by the Spokesman-Review, features teams of Greater Spokane League stars against a regional squad of players from North Idaho, smaller schools and players from the Mid-Columbia Conference.

The girls game, which tips of at 5:15 p.m., will include five MCC players from the Tri-Cities: Richland’s Kylee Fox, Kennewick’s Haylee Johnson, Kamiakin’s Maddy Rendall and Nikole Thomas, and Chiawana’s Malia Ruud.

The boys game will start at 7 p.m., and the regional squad boasts for MCC players: Kamiakin’s Peter Dress, Kennewick’s Jonah Gebers, Hermiston’s Grant Olsen, and Richland’s Josh Woodard.

College update notes

▪ EWU’s Hally Ruff (Walla Walla) placed third in the women’s pole vault event at the Don Kirby Elite Indoor meet at New Mexico State University on Feb. 11.

Ruff cleared 13 feet, 3.75 inches.

▪ Freshman Paris Wilson (Sunnyside) scored 12 points and had 5 steals for Evergreen State University’s women’s basketball team in a 74-58 loss to Eastern Oregon University on Feb. 17.

▪ Tyson Stover (Chiawana) went 19-8 this season wrestling for Corban University. Stover advanced to the NAIA national tournament at the 197-pound division, where he went 0-2.

▪ Former Pasco High quarterback Kaden Watanabe is headed to Graceland University to play football. Watanabe was Pasco’s QB back in the 2021 season, but he the 6-foot-2, 200-pounder transferred to Bellevue West High School in Nebraska for his senior year in the fall of 2022.