By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
COLTON, Ore.– The Gervais Boys Basketball team had one last push in them in the Tri-River Conference League Playoffs on Monday night.
Three minutes into the fourth quarter, they trailed Colton 53-44 as the Vikings began to pull away. A 6-0 run had stretched a 47-44 lead at the start of the quarter to nine.
But then something clicked. The Cougars answered with a 6-0 run of their own, cutting Colton’s lead to 53-50 with three minutes left. In a win-or-go-home game, the momentum hung in the balance. Their defense got another stop and Gervais came down the court on offense. They had a chance to possibly tie the game up, if not amplify the pressure further on Colton if they got the game back to within one.
“My players have a lot of heart. They compete every time, whether we’re down by two, we’re down by ten, we’re down by 30, they do a good job at that. We went in with a mindset that it’s us against everybody and we tried to do that and we had a good mindset throughout the whole game,” starts Gervais Head Coach Adam Vasas. “It’s tough when you play a team three times and those little adjustments get you sometimes. It’s just whoever executes the best down the stretch. We knew that was going to be the case tonight.”
Then the Vikings forced a turnover and converted it into fast-break points. Colton followed with another stop, contesting two straight Gervais shots in the paint before securing the rebound and turning that into points as well.
It swung the momentum back to the Vikings, who pushed the lead to seven. Their defense clamped down over the final three minutes, holding Gervais to just two points in a 65-56 win that sends them to the TRC third-place game against Santiam later this week. All game, Colton’s defense created chaos. Its press, traps and relentless energy kept the Vikings within striking distance and ultimately fueled the two fourth-quarter runs that sealed the win.
It’s a credit to head coach Kyle Pollack and his staff for putting them in this position, with their sights set on Pendleton in two weeks. The rest has been grit and hard work. They haven’t played their ‘A’ game yet, but the Vikings believe it’s coming as they continue their push for a 2A state playoff spot.
“Senior year, so we got to win or go home, so put it all on the floor. Coach is a big part every day in practice, we’re not the best in shooting or anything, so we got to have grit to win,” said Colton’s Logan Roberts. “We need to have that and we haven’t played an ‘A’-game yet, we’ve had ‘B’s and ‘C’s, we just need to pick it up, not turn the ball over.”
Roberts led the Vikings with 27 points. and Grant B. contributed another 18. Jamison Mcgill connected on five three-pointers, all in the first half, for Colton.Gervais, which finished the regular season at 9-14, was led by Deo Kuznetsov’s 26 points. The sophomore knocked down six 3-pointers and is part of a strong core set to return next season.
“I thought Deo did a good job of executing. They box-and-one him most of the second half and he was able to get quite a few points off of that, so he did a great job with that,” said Vasas. “We got a really good young group coming back next year and we had a really successful JV team. I think we’re trending in the right direction and moving up as we go.”
Photos By Jeremy McDonald
