At home on Friday, the Pirates displayed their quickness against the athletic but outmanned Life Christian visitors, to take a 54-24 win.
The Eagles, a 2B team from Tacoma, used a full-court press from the outset to slow down the fast-running Pirate offense.
In the half-court, they double-teamed John Gage, Pirate big man and leading scorer.
Vashon was only up 10-4 with 40 seconds left in the quarter, when Max Burnham buried a 3-pointer to signal a taste of things to come.
During the quarter break, the Pirates appeared to adjust to the Eagles’ defense. Urged on by a sizable and boisterous home crowd, they not only out-hustled the Eagles for every rebound and loose ball, but pushed the tempo with fast breaks. When they weren’t running the court, the Pirates were kicking the ball out for 3’s, one each by Burnham and Kerns on back-to-back possessions.
Following the assassins’ trail, Thomas Timm-Skove cleanly picked the pocket of a Life Christian ball handler for two more points. The result of all this Pirate mayhem was a 20-0 all-Pirate second quarter.
Life Christian were on life support as they left for the halftime break, down 33-4.
Vashon took mercy on the visitors in the second half. The bench got valuable playing time and showed that they each could be starters on most other league teams. Michael Stoffer positioned himself to take a hook pass from a driving Timm-Skove for 2 points.
Elias Weston drove the baseline for 2, then came straight up the lane for another lay-in, pretzel twisting through three Life Christian defenders to complete the play.
Quinn Holert had a particularly good series in which he hit a clean 10 foot pull-up jumper, stole the inbound pass and positioned himself to nail a 3-pointer on the resulting possession.
Life Christian could not gain ground on the Pirate bench as they limped off the Island from a 54-24 Pirate thumping.
— Charlie Pieterick is the father of Pirate Chris Pieterick.
Pirate Points
Burnham 10, Gage 8, Hoffman 8, Timm-Skove 7, Wegner 6, Holert 5, Weston 4, Kerns 3, Michael Stoffer 3, Kyle Bakker, Odin Jacobovitch, Chris Pieterick
