Chiawana boys rally from 10 down at half, knock off Kennewick in regular season finale

Needing a win to clinch a home game in the first round of the 4A District 8 playoffs, things looked bleak for the Chiawana High School boys basketball team Friday night when it trailed by 10 points to host Kennewick at halftime.

But the Riverhawks had rallied against the Lions before this season. They won the first meeting at home in overtime after trailing by 11 in the third quarter.

“We went over the value of the ball and guarding Jenner (Norwood, Kennewick forward),” Chiawana coach Chad Herron said of the adjustments his team made at halftime Friday. “They played against adversity, and I thought when it got down to the last 2 or 3 minutes, we got the ball where we needed it to go.”

Norwood still got his, though he cooled off late to finish with 31 points after scoring 20 in the first half, allowing the Chiawana front court to take the game over and rally the team for a 63-56 victory in the regular season finale for both squads.

After losing their only two games of last season’s District 5/8 playoffs, the Riverhawks were motivated to fight to the finish so they could host a postseason game this time around.

“These past couple years in the playoffs, we’ve had a bad taste in our mouth,” said junior forward Matthew Kroner, who had 15 points and nine rebounds. “This year, we just had to grind it out with our seniors. We had so many seniors this year that just said ‘we really want to step up and make something out of our year.’ ”

Chiawana (10-10, 9-5) will play host to GSL No. 3 seed Lewis and Clark (13-7, 10-4) at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the first round of the double-elimination playoffs. Even though Walla Walla (13-7, 9-5) split with Chiawana on the season and finished with the same record, it takes the MCC No. 3 seed because of a preseason draw.

Sophomore forward Seth Schmidt added a nice boost for the Riverhawks in this one, posting team highs with 16 points and three blocks to form a menacing tandem with Kroner on the low block.

“As a sophomore, he (Schmidt) has stepped up quite a bit,” Kroner said. “He had a big game here, like when Jenner would go on his run, Seth stepped up with him and kind of matched him.”

Norwood scored 15 of the Lions’ first 17 points, eventually guiding them to a 19-13 lead at the end of the first quarter and 36-26 at intermission. Chiawana countered in the second half by focusing in on the conference’s second-leading scorer (at 19.2 points per game) and chipping its way back into the turnover battle (finished down 18-12 after a dismal start), and eventually took its first lead of the game on a layup by Schmidt with 3:18 left to play.

The teams traded blows after that, but Chiawana pulled away with a 3-pointer by Cooper DeWitt and four straight free throw makes by Simon Lopez in a minute-long stretch late to go up by six.

Kroner put an exclamation point on the win with a breakaway, one-handed dunk with 10 seconds remaining, though he said there was some hesitation on whether or not to go for the flush.

“All I could think was, ‘I hope I don’t miss this,’ ” he said. “I went up thinking I’d just lay it up. I thought, ‘if I make it, that’d be really cool, but if I miss it, that’s gonna stick with people for awhile.’ ... It could have been bad, but it turned out well.”

As the MCC’s No. 2 seed for 3A districts, Kennewick (9-11, 5-9) will host North Centeral at 7 p.m. Tuesday in a loser-out game. The winner advances to face top GSL seed Mt. Spokane on Feb. 9, but moves into a double-elimination bracket, with two of the four remaining teams advanving to state.

This story was originally published February 2, 2018 at 11:16 PM with the headline "Chiawana boys rally from 10 down at half, knock off Kennewick in regular season finale."