By Rick Martin

Mount Shasta – The Mt. Shasta boys Basketball team felt confident going into their first round game with Central Valley; after all, they’d beaten them by 18 points in the season opener back in December. But in the playoffs, confidence can be fleeting if the underdog grabs the momentum.

The underdog Falcons grabbed the “Big Mo” early on Wednesday night, but the Bears grabbed it right back, rolling to a 65-54 win and a date with 1-seed Corning in the D-IV quarterfinals.

CV came out smoking, with sharpshooter Luke Cassedy finding his way to the basket for easy looks and a quick 8-0 lead. That forced coach Kirk Andrus to reluctantly burn a timeout just past the 4-minute mark in the opening period, trying to calm his guys down.

“I didn’t want to burn that timeout there,” Andrus said, “But I could sense that we just needed to regroup.”

It worked.

Jake Padula got the Bears (15-9) on the board with a bucket, and the defense forced three straight Falcon turnovers over the next minute. The Bears converted each one into points; the last a long 3-ball from sophomore Tim Jaegel that gave the Bears the lead for good at 9-8. The Bears pushed the advantage to 16-12 before Cassedy nailed a 3 of his own at the horn to make it a one-point game. Cassedy had 13 in the period.

But the Bears didn’t let up, as Jaegel buried another 3-pointer to stretch the lead. He also matched up with Cassedy at the other end of the floor and shut him down, allowing the Bears to take complete control. The long-range shooting opened up the inside game, and Mt. Shasta went to work, getting easy looks from Steven Reed, Eric Thelander and Jake Padula inside. When the half finally ended, the Bears had opened a 14-point advantage, outscoring CV 17-4 in the frame, and scoring 33 points in the last 11 minutes of the half.

“That was fun basketball,” Andrus said. “We took control at both ends of the floor and played the way we wanted to play. After that 8-0 run of theirs, I thought we responded with 2-1/2 quarters of outstanding basketball.”

After halftime, The Falcons (9-17) mixed it up, getting the ball down low to Ejay Hutcheck to spark a 5-0 run that briefly got the lead back down to single digits. But the Bears responded again, recognizing and exploiting a mismatch under the basket to get Reed going. Reed had seven points in the quarter, including a hacked-in-the-act three point play in the final minute that pushed the lead back up to 14 points.

The 4th quarter was just ugly, for both teams. The Falcons tried anything they could to change the tempo, and the Bears got out of their game plan a bit. And, both teams started racking up the fouls. The two clubs shot 26 free-throws in the quarter, but the final outcome was never in doubt. Jaegel buried a pair of daggers from long range down the stretch, and had his best offensive game of the season with 19 points. Thelander and Reed added 14 apiece.

“It was really a coming out party of sorts for Jaegel; he was my ace in the hole tonight,” Andrus said. “He’s big and quick and difficult to play against.”

But the praise was widespread for the Bears.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am of each and every one of these guys,” the coach stated.  “To see them grow and learn and have that type of success in a playoff game was special. I’m particularly happy for our seniors, who knew that this was the last time they’d play in our gym.”

The Bears travel to Corning next, and should they knock off the top seed, they would be back on the road next week in the semifinals.

“Corning represents a great challenge for us. They’re long and quick, and a lot like us. They don’t have one guy scoring a ton of points. They’ve got several contributing solid games every night.”

So, can the Bears repeat the opening act?

“Absolutely,” Andrus said. “We’ll have to have our best rebounding game, our best defensive game and we have to start fast. But we’re capable of matching up with and beating anybody. This is what we play for.”

Notes: Led by Jaegel, the Bear bench scored 27 points…Cassedy led all scorers with 27, despite missing most of the 3rd quarter after committing a hard foul inside…The Bears hit 6 3’s on the night. Central Valley – which average 6 a game – managed only two, both in the first half…The Bears’ struggles at the FT line continued, as they shot only 8/15. Coming into the game, they had hit 51% from the line on the season…Mt. Shasta stayed perfect when scoring 50 or more points this year. When they hit the half-century, they are 12-0.