When everything else went wrong, Ryan Phelps was right.
The Bayfield High School junior scored 27 points, grabbed 15 rebounds and blocked five shots to help the boys basketball team hold onto a 51-45 win in the Class 3A Intermountain League district tournament against Centauri.
BHS (14-6) advanced to the league championship game to be played at 6:30 p.m. Saturday against Alamosa. The two teams split the regular-season meetings, setting up an epic rubber match.
“I’d be shocked if it’s not rocking tomorrow,” BHS head coach Jeff Lehnus said of what he expects from the fans Saturday night. “We want to see a sea of purple, and we want to go for it. It’s the joy of having the tournament here. Here we go; tournament championship at our place. Exciting stuff.”
The matchup almost wasn’t to be. Alamosa (18-2) survived a scare from Pagosa Springs to win by one point in the other semifinal moments before Bayfield took the floor.
Centauri took an early lead and went into the second quarter up 12-11, but Phelps and the Wolverines claimed the lead at 13-12 and never surrendered it the rest of the night.
BHS got beat badly in the rebounding department, and second-chance points kept the Falcons (9-12) in the game. So did BHS missed free throws, as the Wolverines went 19-of-29 from the line.
Rust showed, as BHS hadn’t played a game in nine days. A scrimmage Tuesday against Durango helped, but it couldn’t match the playoff atmosphere the Wolverines would face Friday.
The Anderson brothers, Nate and Sam, made countless big shots in the second half to keep the Falcons’ upset hopes alive. Nate finished with 15 points, and Sam had 13. Sam made a 3-pointer at the third-quarter buzzer seconds after a Phelps slam dunk brought the building to its feet. BHS led only 36-32 going to the fourth quarter after a seven-point third. BHS had only one basket the first 3:30 of the fourth quarter, too.
Phelps went 11-of-13 from the line and was dominant all night.
“What I appreciate most is his toughness and effort,” Lehnus said of Phelps. “His success is a by-product of that. He’s one of the top players in the state for everything he does, as far as I’m concerned.”
It was a Dax Snooks 3-pointer from the corner in the fourth quarter that helped BHS put the game away. Snooks has had a knack for fourth-quarter heroics this year, especially on the defensive end. He finished with nine crucial points, including four in the fourth quarter.
“Dax has been one of my best friends from Day 1,” Phelps said. “It’s great to see where he’s at now, and I’m so happy he’s succeeding.”
After blowing out Centauri twice in the regular season by a combined 59 points, the Falcons gave the Wolverines all they could handle. But a stretch of four consecutive turnovers late in the fourth quarter as well as some missed short-range shots were too much for Centauri to overcome.
“It was a close game at the end, and we got a little excited,” Centauri head coach Brian Loch said. “The last two times they blew us out. It was a great effort, and we came a long way this year.”
Alamosa and BHS split the IML regular-season title, but Alamosa was the top seed in the tournament via tiebreaker. It was Bayfield’s first share of a title since 1996. BHS hasn’t won a league tournament since 1992, when it won the San Juan Basin League against Nucla. That Nucla team was led by Ryan Farmer, father of current BHS sophomore Hayden Farmer. Kevin Prior, current BHS sophomore Keyon Prior’s father, was a starter on the 1996 team that won a share of the league title.
BHS hasn’t been to the IML tournament finals since 2006, when it lost to Pagosa Springs. The last time the tournament was in Bayfield was 2013, and Alamosa won.
The Mean Moose and Wolverines have squared off 17 times since 2009, and Alamosa has won 14 of those meetings.
Throw all the history out the door Saturday night, as a resurgent BHS team looks to knock off No. 5 Alamosa for the second consecutive time.
“This is who we wanted to play,” Phelps said of Alamosa. “We didn’t want Pagosa or anybody else. We’re happy for it.”
Loch said he expects the championship to be a five-point game or closer. He also expects both teams to represent the league well in regional tournaments down the road.
“We punched our ticket to regional tonight, so job accomplished,” Lehnus said. “Now it’s onto the championship.”
Only three players scored for Alamosa on Friday. That’s all the Mean Moose needed to charge back from a 10-point deficit.
Trailing by one with less than 1 minute to play in the fourth quarter, Ryan Brubacher stormed to the hoop for a pair of layups that delivered a 50-49 win to the top-seed Moose in the semifinals of the Class 3A Intermountain League district tournament.
Isaiah Griego got a layup of his own to restore the Pirates’ lead to 49-48, but Alamosa got the final bucket with 13 seconds to play.
Greigo got one more shot at a highly-contested 3-pointer near the buzzer, but it never had the line and rimmed out. A long rebound never gave Pagosa a chance at a second shot before time expired.
Brubacher finished with 25 points. He had 17 of his team’s 19 in the first half. Noah Romero added 19 points, including three 3-pointers in the third quarter. Chad Jackson finished with six points for Alamosa to complete the team’s scoring.
Ty Kimsey had 13 points. Griego finished with 12, and Jesus Pacheco finished with nine.
Pagosa will meet Centauri at 3:30 p.m. Saturday in the third-place game. The Centauri girls will meet the Pagosa Springs girls at 5 p.m. in the girls IML championships. The BHS-Alamosa boys game will follow immediately after.
jlivingston@ durangoherald.com
