King's Boys Headed Back to State

It’s back to state for the King’s boys basketball team.

King’s clinched a state regional berth and will make its sixth consecutive trip to the big dance with a dominating 45-29 win over Bellevue Christian Saturday morning at Mountlake Terrace High School.

Junior James McCutcheon scored a game-high 13 points to help the Knights (11-15) secure the fifth and final state berth from the 1A Tri-District tournament.

After placing sixth in state last year in Class 1A, the Knights were young this season after losing six seniors and struggled to a 7-7 Cascade Conference record.

But they’ve got a history of rising to the occasion in the postseason and that happened again.

“Everyone’s pushing against us,” McCutcheon said. “It’s great we’re going back there. We lost six seniors. It’s on us juniors and three seniors. We’re going to make it happen this year.”

King’s faces the No. 3 seed from District 5 in a state regional loser-out game at Eisenhower High School in Yakima, Friday, Feb. 25. If they win they play Saturday, also at Eisenhower.

“It was really fun to see the kids respond in the way that they did,” King’s coach Bill Liley said. “They played great defense and rebounded today. I’m really proud of them. We’ve been through a lot this year. It’s been a rough year for us as far as King’s basketball is concerned--for these guys to get to move on to the regionals, it’s an awesome deal.”

The Knights showed resilience against a pesky Bellevue Christian team.

After King's took an eight-point first quarter lead after a 3-pointer by McCutcheon, the Vikings battled back to within two at 16-14.

But King’s answered with a 16-4 run to take a 32-18 halftime lead.

King’s increased their lead in the third quarter to 15 after a McCutcheon basket, but then went cold, failing to score for nearly five minutes. Bellevue Christian cut the lead to eight, before guard Kyle Sawtell ended the drought with a layup to put the Knights back up by 10.

King’s then held Bellevue Christian to only two points in the fourth quarter to close out the victory.

“My assistant coaches did a great job of helping prepare for this game,” Liley said. “We had the right defenses called for this team.”

The 9 a.m. start also worked to the Knights advantage, he said.

“We know how do these morning games,” Liley said. “We do them a lot during the season when we go to those tournaments. The whole time we were in Florida (for a holiday tournament) we played the morning game every time so it totally prepared us. “

Sawtell finished with 12 points and Austin Porcello added nine for King’s. Bryce Oldham scored 10 to lead Bellevue Christian.