DENVER – Instructions in the Rock Canyon huddle from coach Kent Grams were simple and clear: get the ball to our dudes.
That would be Jacob David and Cooper Ellwood, a pair of playmakers that stared down a furious Ralston Valley rally and delivered the Jaguars a 68-58 win in the Class 6A boys basketball state championship game on Saturday at Denver Coliseum.
Ellwood led No. 5 Rock Canyon (25-3) with 21 points, David poured in 16 points and Kai Valentine had a double-double with 13 points and 14 rebounds.
A Valentine layup gave Rock Canyon a 54-53 lead it would not relinquish with 4:05 remaining. It was followed up by a David 3-pointer and was part of a game-ending 12-3 run that delivered Rock Canyon its first boys basketball state title.
Zeke Andrews led Ralston Valley (26-2) with 21 points. Frank Psaute tallied 17 points and Caiden Braketa chipped in 16 points and seven rebounds for the Mustangs who had their 11-game winning streak snapped.
“Everything was chaotic; we wanted to be calm with the basketball,” Grams said. “I told our guys to trust the process and get the ball to our dudes. We had to communicate on defense and have great awareness on offense.
“That’s exactly what we did down the stretch. We had to come back to the ball and be strong with it because we were in the eye of the storm.”
After it fell behind for the first time since the first quarter, Rock Canyon responded with a 9-0 scoring spurt to reassume control of the game. David and Ellwood hit five foul shots down the stretch to seal the win for Rock Canyon.
“We didn’t care that they took the lead,” Valentine said. “We had all the belief we needed in our huddle, with the guys on the court. We went out there and just wanted it more down the stretch.”
For the second straight game, David put an exclamation point on the third quarter.
With the floor cleared out for a final shot, the Rock Canyon junior used a bob-and-weave move to dip under a pair of defenders that would make a prize fighter proud. It cleared just enough space for David to beat the third-quarter buzzer with a 3-pointer for a 46-37 Rock Canyon lead.
“The play there is for everyone to get out of the way,” David said. “I get the ball to the top of the key and just try to go out and make a play.”
The Jaguars’ “dudes” were pressed into action because the Mustangs opened the fourth quarter on a 12-2 run as Andrews, Braketa and Psaute canned treys. Andrews’ follow up dunk gave the Mustangs their first lead since the first quarter at 53-52.
“We had to be resilient,” Jacob said. “We’ve been down time and time again over the course of the season and we always came back. We knew we could do that at this moment, too.”
A slick, tic-tac-toe trio of passes from Psaute to Quentin Hansen set up Andrews from the dunker position for his second jam of the night as the Mustangs trailed 16-14 early in the second quarter.
Valentine’s hard-earned bucket in the paint pushed the Jaguars’ lead to double digits for the first time at 25-14. Jacob David capped a 10-0 run with a breakaway layup to give the Jaguars a 27-14 edge. Andrews beat the first-half buzzer with a three from the wing to cut the Rock Canyon lead to 30-21.
The Mustangs started the third quarter determined to get the ball inside to Andrews. The senior forward, who will play football next year at Northern Colorado responded, as he muscled his way to three layups – one which led to a three-point play. But it was just exchanging a pair of baskets with Rock Canyon big man Valentine and a reverse layup from Ellwood as the Jaguars held a 38-28 lead at the 3:54 mark.
An 8-2 Ralston Valley run that Braketa capped with a try pulled the Mustangs within 38-33. But, coming out of a Jaguars’ timeout, Ellwood drained a 3 from the top of the key as Rock Canyon thwarted the Mustangs’ rally.
It was the kind of grit and effort that the Jags had shown since the 6A tournament moved to Denver Coliseum last week And it all paid off with a new piece of hardware; the first of its kind for the boys basketball team.
(Doug Ottewill/ColoradoPreps.com)
