By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
SALEM, Ore.– The Chemeketa Community College Men’s Basketball team showed flashes of their potential in Sunday’s heartbreaking defeat to Grays Harbor at home.
Down eight with 11:30 left in the game and again down seven with 2:55 left in the non-league contest, the Storm rallied. That nine point deficit, they rallied to tie the game at 64 thanks to a 18-10 spurt and that seven point deficit, a 12-5 run had Chemeketa even with the Chokers at 81 apiece with eight seconds remaining in the contest.
“It was amazing to see that down eight points, that we’re able to come back and tie it up. We were playing with intensity, our press was working and our shots were falling. That’s what we need moving forward for a full forty minutes,” said West Albany-grad Gavin Aguilar.
Aguilar and Tualatin-grad Treyvan Wilkerson stepped up big for the Storm in the second half. Scoring 29 of the squad’s 45 second half points, the duo paced the offense as Chemeketa played a little more stronger than they had during the first 20 minutes of the game.
Aguilar led the Storm with 23 points with seven rebounds, Wilkerson finished with 19 points with six assists in the tough 82-81 defeat.
“We just knew coming out from halftime that wwe needed to pick it up. We had a really rough first half. Myself, I had a lot of turnovers and too many mistakes. We knew that we had to get it going, we just had to come out firing and we did, but we didn’t come out with the ‘W’,” said Aguilar.
Needing a stop to force overtime, or maybe a last second heave, the Storm swarmed as they had to get back into the game. But the dagger, the heartbreak, came with 0.9 remaining in the game when a foul was called as Chemeketa and Grays Harbor battled by the basket.
The Chokers, already in the bonus as was the Storm, made the first one that proved to be the deciding factor in the game on Sunday.
Five games in and four of their games were decided at some point in the second half against Highland, Lower Columbia, Spokane and now Grays Harbor. All good learning experiences as they hope to hit their stride by the time the NWAC South Region play begins in January.
“We’re in it with a bunch of top teams in tight games, but it shows that we’re there and we got to work on it moving forward and win the tight games,”said Aguilar.
Trinity Lutheran-grad Andrew Imhoff contribute 16 points in the game. Chemeketa will host the Pacific University JV squad on Tuesday.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
