The Bremerton High School boys basketball team delivered another tail-whipping Tuesday to give the seniors a final victory on their home floor.
The Knights (11-4 overall, 11-2 league) outraced Olympic High School to a 72-43 victory on senior night at Les Eathorne Gymnasium and Ken Wills Court, extending their win streak to five.
With the win, the team moved one step closer to earning the outright Class 3A/2A Olympic League regular-season championship, needing one more victory to clinch a share and two more to clinch it outright.
Bremerton secured the top 3A spot last week in a lopsided victory over North Kitsap High School.
“Man, I just don’t want it to end,” junior Andre Coleman said. “We’re playing as a team and we’re playing with heart.”
Coleman was one of four Knights to score at least 15 points, contributing 17. The team’s leading scorer for the season, senior Jarell Flora, scored a game-high 21, and seniors Charles Wilson and Terrick McGhee scored 17 and 15, respectively.
Since losing back-to-back games to Sequim High School and Kingston High School by a combined four points last month, Bremerton has won five consecutive games by 12 points or more.
There are three games remaining in the regular season — all on the road — including the finale against current 2A league leader Kingston (11-5, 8-4), which handed the Knights their only home loss of the season about three weeks ago.
Bremerton controls its own destiny for the outright league title, but if the Knights lose to either Klahowya Secondary School (Friday) or Port Townsend High School (Feb. 12), and Kingston wins its next three, the season finale will be for the title.
The players know it.
“We’re just taking it one game at a time, but we want it,” Coleman said.
By virtue of earning the league’s top 3A spot to the playoffs, the Knights have already secured themselves at least two games at the West Central/Southwest District Tournament. The games begin Feb. 26 and determine which teams advance to the state tournament.
Tuesday’s game was one of the Knights’ best performances of the season.
They blitzed Olympic in the first quarter to build a 16-6 lead and didn’t let up in the second, outscoring the Trojans 21-10 to take a 37-16 lead going into halftime.
The Trojans struggled to handle Bremerton’s full-court press, creating easy scoring opportunities for the athletic Knights.
By the midway point of the third quarter, it was a 30-point game.
The victory was particularly special for the four seniors – Flora, McGhee, Wilson and role player Keegan Fein — because they concluded their 2009-10 home schedule with a 7-1 record. All the victories were by double digits.
“It was fun out there,” Fein said. “The crowd was into it, you could feel the energy.”
The team is at Klahowya at 7 p.m. Friday.
