News

The Rainier High School boys basketball team was in dire need of something positive before winter break, with three starters lost in a week and the Mountaineers falling twice to Central 2B League contenders.

Senior guard Jake Meldrum came to the rescue, dropping 30 points in a 53-40 home win over Morton-White Pass Friday, Dec. 20. Rainier quickly scrapped a first quarter at the end of which it trailed 9-2, and the Mountaineers buried the Timberwolves in the second quarter and beyond thanks to a flurry of buckets from Meldrum.

“Right now we need him to score. That’s exactly what he did,” Rainier head coach Ben Sheaffer said of Meldrum, who, despite only shooting 6-20 from the field, cashed in on 14 of his 16 free-throw attempts.

Rainier had a rough opening quarter, missing all 12 of its field goals. T-Wolves senior guard Noah Troy got the road team’s offense going with a couple of treys, forcing Sheaffer to spend a timeout trailing 7-0. Trailing 9-2 entering the second, the Mountaineers offense responded as if the first quarter had never happened.

Sophomore Jordan Pringle’s layup 29 seconds into the frame marked Rainier’s first field goal of the night, and they continued to flow. James Meldrum followed up a miss with a putback jumper, and Jake Meldrum gave his squad the lead with two triples of his own.

Rainier closed the first half on a 23-3 run, including scoring 19 of the final 20 points tallied. Jake Meldrum and Morton-White Pass each scored a dozen, and Rainier led 25-12 at the half. Junior guard Matheus Mckitrick, who has seen a recent uptick in minutes with the injuries to Peyton Sheaffer and Josh Meldrum, gave the Mountaineers a spark on defense by picking up the T-Wolves ball-handlers full court.

“We have some guys that are just trying to gain confidence that haven’t played a ton of varsity basketball, and they’re kind of waiting for somebody else to do it,” Ben Sheaffer said of the flip from the first quarter to the second. “At some point, it’s like, ‘Hey, quit looking around. You’re him.’ They got comfortable, but I think defensively, when Matheus came in and we started picking up full court, he injected some juice into all of us, and that’s when we got going.”

Another reason for Rainier’s big second quarter was Morton-White Pass starting guard Judah Kelly sitting for some time due to foul trouble. The T-Wolves also made only two of seven free throws in the first half.

“I might not have agreed with all the calls, but I think we could have moved the ball better and moved without the ball better,” T-Wolves head coach Kevin Dunlap said. “And we could have made our free throws.”

A drastic flip would not occur for the third straight quarter, as Jake Meldrum proceeded with his offensive tear into the third quarter. He added his third triple of the game along with seven of eight free throws to give him 24 points and Rainier a 39-23 advantage through three.

Despite trailing by as many as 23 points in the second half, the T-Wolves continued to play with aggression and heart. Those traits made Dunlap proud of his team, but shooting just 5-15 from the charity stripe hurt their chances of a comeback in a 53-40 loss. 

“I felt like we continued to battle all the way until the final buzzer, and that’s big. Shots started falling. We hit some big ones there at the end,” Dunlap said. “There was just not enough time left in the game to make it happen. When you get down that much, it’s really hard to overcome a deficit like that. You’ve got to really come out with a spark, and I felt like we waited too long to catch that spark.”

Jake Meldrum led all scorers with 30 points, while Pringle was impressive with five points and 13 rebounds in his second straight start in place of Peyton Sheaffer. The Mountaineers struggled to pull down defensive rebounds in their losses to Adna and Napavine, and Pringle made sure Morton-White Pass didn’t get many second-chance opportunities.

“We played a lot of zone tonight, and the concern, as always, in a zone, is rebounding because you don’t always have an assignment. There were times where we struggled a little bit rebounding, but overall, I thought we did a pretty good job,” Ben Sheaffer said.

After scoring 34 points in a win over Toutle Lake on Wednesday, Kelly was held to just nine points against Rainier, eight of which came in the fourth quarter. Troy paced the T-Wolves with 14 points, and Logan Mays contributed 13.

“We had a lot of focus on Judah. He’s a great player, and I thought we did very well. He scored a few late, but I think we held him down pretty well for the majority of the game,” Sheaffer said.

The Mountaineers (5-2, 3-2 C2BL) win the first game of a back-to-back, as they head to Onalaska (1-4, 1-4 C2BL) at 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 21. Morton-White Pass (3-3, 2-3 C2BL) gets a week off before hosting Onalaska at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 27. 

CAMAS — As the defending Class 4A state champions in girls basketball, the Camas Papermakers are learning what it means to be a reigning state champion. 

Read more...