West Linn loses the Class 6A state championship game to Tualatin 60-47.
Shocking.
Stunning.
Painful.
There may be no better words to explain what happened to the top-ranked West Linn boys basketball team in the Class 6A state championship game on Saturday, March 11, at the Chiles Center on the University of Portland campus.
The Lions came into Saturday’s title contest as winners of 15 straight games, as champions of the Three Rivers League, as champions of the Les Schwab Invitational, as champions of the Capitol City Classic and as winners of three straight games against No. 3 Tualatin, West Linn’s opponent in the 2023 finale. They also came in as Oregon’s top team, and previously, a team that had been ranked No. 1 in the country.
But none of those apparent advantages meant a thing on Saturday. The Timberwolves held the Lions to a single point in the night’s first quarter, kept the lead for the game’s entire 32 minutes and pulled off a 60-47 upset that stunned the world of Oregon high school basketball.
“We had a special season. It sucks this had to happen,” said West Linn senior forward Mark Hamper, the Three Rivers League Defensive Player of the Year who finished with two points, four rebounds and one assist. “They’re a great team over there and it just didn’t go the way we wanted it today.”
“We got out to a slow start and we had to fight back from a (19)-point deficit,” said Lion junior guard Max Juhala, who came off the bench to score seven points on 3 of 3 shooting from the field and a 1 of 1 day at the foul line, along with three rebounds. “It was just kind of a setback for us and we tried to push through it. We wanted it just as much as they did, but they got the win in the end.”
“I just didn’t see that coming, that slow start we had,” said West Linn coach Robert Key. “I haven’t seen it all year. I don’t know if it was from the game last night because it was so up and down and fast-paced. I don’t have any answers right now. The ball just didn’t bounce our way.”
The Lions were led by senior guard Jackson Shelstad’s 25 points on 11 of 20 shooting from the field and a 2 of 5 day at the free throw line, along with six rebounds and two assists. WL senior guard Adrian Mosley added six points on 3 of 10 shooting from the field, along with five rebounds and two blocks.
With the loss, West Linn saw its 15-game winning streak (the state’s longest) snapped and ended its year at 28-2 overall after winning the Three Rivers League. Tualatin, meanwhile, won for the sixth straight time and closed its year at 24-5 overall after finishing second in the Three Rivers League.
The Timberwolves were led by senior guard Josiah Lake’s 20 points on 4 of 7 shooting from the field and a 12 of 16 day at the foul line, along with five rebounds, three assists, one block and three steals. Junior wing/post Jaden Steppe finished with 19 points on 9 of 23 shooting from the field and a 1 of 2 day at the free throw line, along with 10 rebounds and three assists. And junior post Jayden Fortier added nine points on 4 of 8 shooting from the field and a 1 of 6 day at the foul line, along with 15 rebounds and one block.
In that disastrous first quarter, the Lions went 0 for 10 from the field and just 1 of 4 from the free throw line in the game’s first eight minutes, their lone point coming when senior Sam Leavitt rebounded a Shelstad miss, was fouled and hit 1 of 2 foul shots with 1 minute, 21 seconds remaining in the first quarter.
While Tualatin led 10-1 at that point, the Timberwolves didn’t exactly set the world on fire in the opening quarter either, going 5 of12 from the field and 2 of 4 from the line, with Lake scoring six points and Fortier four to take a 12-1 edge into the second quarter.
As painful as all that had been, the Lions were only down 11 points with 24 minutes still to play and it looked like they’d fight their way back into contention early in the second quarter. Indeed, West Linn ripped off six straight points to open the period and closed within 12-7 when Mosley hit a pullup jumpshot from the left wing with 5:48 remaining in the first half.
West Linn was still down just 21-15 when Shelstad went end-to-end to score, splitting three defenders to connect in traffic with 2:27 left in the half — but the Lions’ relative good fortune wouldn’t last.
The Timberwolves answered — as they would all night — with a 9-1 scoring stretch in the final 2:07 of the half, with Fortier taking a Steppe pass and scoring inside, Steppe hitting a stepback jumpshot from the right side, Steppe scoring again deep in the paint and senior Jack Wagner taking a Lake pass and burying a 3-pointer from the left corner with two seconds left in the half to give their team a 30-16 lead at the break.
Things got worse for the Lions at the start of the second half, too, with Tualatin stitching together a 9-4 run over the first 3:05 of the third period to lead 39-20 when Steppe scored on a reverse layin. In addition to Steppe’s four points in that run, Wagner hit back-to-back shots (including a “three”) to score five of his eight points in just 1:04.
To their great credit, and despite foul trouble to Hamper, Mosley and Leavitt, the Lions kept playing hard and ripped off a 20-6 run that cut their deficit to 47-40 with 3:59 left in the contest.
Juhala kicked that run off with a 3-pointer, and Shelstad and Mosley handled the next 13 points, with Shelstad scoring on a tip-in, a pair of pull-up jumpers and a drive that he turned into a three-point play, while Mosley scored inside twice.
Hamper added two free throws and Juhala a basket from the right baseline to get their team back within seven points.
But Tualatin held firm down the stretch, knocking down 7 of 12 free throws in the final 3:12 of the game, and adding two Lake hoops (including a steal and a breakaway dunk) and a Steppe jam in the final seconds to put West Linn away for good.
In that same stretch, Mosley fouled out and the Lions managed just a Shelstad drive, a Leavitt “three” and a Juhala drive in the final 2:40.
“They’ve got some great players over there,” Hamper said. “Jayden Fortier, he just makes it so tough, big strong body and he plays his ass off. Props to guys like that who get the job done over there for them. And they’ve got two superstars — Jaden (Steppe’s) tough and Josiah is tough as hell.”
“We always start out hot, that’s our motto — we come out firing, but I guess we just didn’t do that today,” Juhala said. “I respect them.”
“They’re the defending state champs. They had a chip on their shoulder going into game four,” Key added. “We talked about it — they’re going to come out with their best shot. … It’s not that my kids didn’t want to play well, it just didn’t happen.”
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