By Jeremy McDonald
PERRYDALE, Ore.– For the first time since the 2018-2019 season, the Chemawa Boys Basketball team has won more than four games.
Friday night saw the Braves win their fifth games of the game, their most since that 2018-19 season when they went 11-11 and finished fifth in the tough Tri-River Conference up at the 2A Classification, following their 56-46 victory over Perrydale.
Chemawa led 30-17 at the halftime break, but the Pirates challenged the Braves to close out the victory in the second half. A young team Perrydale is this year, had moments where they played strongly as they got the game within single-digits at times in the second half. But couldn’t quite get a steady enough run going to get over the hump as the Braves stepped up their defense when they needed to.
“We bought in and fought hard, we just couldn’t get over the hump. We tried hard, there’s a lot of effort there for sure, but we still make a lot of mistakes and that’s been our biggest issue this year has been those things,” said Perrydale Head Coach Brian Domes.
“We all played 100-percent and I’m really proud of my team. Coming from a Native School, last year we didn’t win a single game and now we got five on the season. We’ve improved every single week and we’re only getting better from here,” said Chemawa’s Kish Sinclair. “Tonight. First time playing Man the whole game and we did pretty good.”
Sinclair, a senior from Washington, led the Braves with 22 points. It was a team effort of sorts for Chemawa in this game. Francisco Barela scored Sinclair did the bulk of his damage in the third quarter, picking up where Francisco Barela, who scored six of his nine points in the second quarter, Sinclair contributed ten points in the third quarter, including a basket at the buzzer that put Chemawa back ahead by ten going into the fourth. Then Peter Tagarook closed out the game with seven of his 13 points coming in the fourth quarter as their defense showed its potential to close out the Casco League Victory.
Chemawa, who’s sitting in fourth-place in the league standings, will have a rematch with C.S. Lewis Academy on Tuesday as they’ll look to lock up a League Playoff spot over the next few weeks. The Watchmen defeated the Braves 63-42 on January 15 in Newberg.
“Last game when we played C.S., they played really good defense. We just got to step up and rebounding, defense. We can score, we got to play some defense,” said Sinclair.
Perrydale, who’s sitting in fifth in the Casco League Standings at the moment, will look to work some similar magic as they did last year as they too look to lock up a league playoff spot, knowing that they worked their way into the 1A State Postseason as a seven win team last year. But similar to Chemawa, the Pirates know that they’ll need to sharpen a few things up on defense as well.
“Obviously last year we were in the fourth spot and played into the third and got C.S. at McMinnville and made it to State playoffs at 7-19. Anything is possible. We’ll see how it goes, we got a lot of effort and some kids buying in on defense and buying in on their own account in getting front of people and not letting them around them and we’ll see what happens,” said Domes.
Jack Pelzer led the Pirates with 13 points. Gavin Graber contributed another ten points as Perrydale will host Livingstone Adventist Academy on Tuesday.
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
