By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
BEAVERTON, Ore.– It was one of those games, where you saw it on the schedule, that it lived up to the hype.
Well. Regis Boys Basketball and Valley Catholic certainly lived up to the hype Tuesday night to close out the Valley Catholic Holiday Tournament at Valley Catholic.
It was high-paced. Physical. Passionate. The crowd fed off that intensity that it felt like a State Championship Game in Coos Bay in terms of the Valiants in 3A or Pendleton in terms for Regis at 2A.
The Rams led 26-24 after the first quarter and led 50-42 at the halftime break. Scoring was at a scorching pace and it was going to come down to who was going to make those defensive adjustments or just went cold from the field to decide the winner.
Coming out of the halftime intermission though, depending on the side of the aisle you were on, it was a good three-minute stretch to start the half or a bad as Valley Catholic came out firing and caught the Rams in a lull. Regis battled. They were able to get some momentum going in the later half of the third quarter into the fourth as the Valiants led 66-65. The two squads kept duking it out, but Valley Catholic in the closing minutes of the non-league game were able to keep some momentum rolling to close out a high scoring 92-86 home victory at home.
It was the game that they hoped happened. A good barometer for their goals and aspirations of reaching their respective State Title Games. Win. Lose. The squads battled until the end and left only good things ahead as the calendar flips into 2026.
“It was a fun game to play in. A fun game to coach because both teams played really well,” said Regis Head Coach Jason Koehnke. “Valley’s very good, we’re really good. You circle some games as games that you know are big games and you know they’ll make you better. Win or lose, you’re going to come out a better team and hopefully that’s what we’ll get from this. Hopefully we’ll learn a couple of things. The margin of error when you play good team’s like this is pretty thin and I thought we played pretty good, but I’m encouraged because there’s some stuff that we can clean up.
“I’m really impressed with how hard we play and how we battled throughout the game. The effort was there.”
Just polishing up the little things really points Koehnke. He pointed towards that three minute stretch to start the third quarter in which they came out sloppy and playing uncharacteristic basketball to their standards. Something they’ll look to clean it up with as they begin Tri-River Conference play on Wednesday at Santiam.
“We got a little bit sloppy, just undisciplined about what we wanted to do on offense. Against some teams where you have a three-minute stretch like that, you’re still ok. Against a team like this, it makes a big difference. But they just kept battling through it, we definitely learned some stuff,” Koehnke said.
Eli Silbernagel led Regis with 37 points and Fletcher Gould contributed another 18 points in the defeat. Hank Lomber led the Valiants with 32 points in the win and Marcos Mueller contributed another 18 points in the win for Valley Catholic, who will wrap up their non-league slate at Western Christian on Saturday.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
