Down goes No. 1! Emerald Ridge stuns top-seeded Mount Si, rolls to 4A semis
· Yahoo Sports
Mount Si was the No. 1 seed in the 4A state tournament, but it felt like No. 7 Emerald Ridge wasn’t clued in to that fact. Considering how fast the Jaguars came out of the gate on Thursday, the energy felt as carefree and loose as a January game in South Hill.
Emerald Ridge wasn’t afraid or intimated by the number next to Mount Si’s name. The Jaguars started fast, leading 36-31 at half and controlling the action for most of the game. When Mount Si finally rallied in the fourth quarter, it was too little, too late.
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Emerald Ridge hung to win, 67-62, stunning the top-seeded Wildcats.
“It’s a huge win,” said guard Jordan Bennett, who scored 15 points. “Nobody believed in us coming into this and we just knocked off the No. 1 seed. That shows how much we’ve built as a program and built as a team.”
The fast start was key, according to Jaguars coach Pat Mullen.
“We wanted to make sure that we were the first ones — we didn’t want to react to them, we wanted to make sure we were the ones making them react to us,” Mullen said. “We didn’t want to play on our heels, we wanted to make sure we were playing downhill. Our guys did a good job of that.”
Emerald Ridge 6-foot-7 forward Jamaize McGriff, the team’s heartbeat, went to the bench early in the second quarter after picking up his second foul, but Emerald Ridge never skipped a beat.
“Next man up, basically,” Bennett said. “We know we can’t play the whole season. Maybe an injury happens. So we know we can’t play that game, just next man up.”
Bouncy Mount Si forward Latt Ford had his moments and scored 23 points, but Emerald Ridge’s guards kept pace. Bennett scored 15, Ellis Mosley scored a team-high 19, Mychal Turner scored 13 and Darius Alexander scored seven. McGriff added nine.
Even before Thursday’s game tipped off, Emerald Ridge had already made history. Wednesday’s win over Redmond was the first state tournament win for the program. Now, new heights, again.
An entirely different challenge awaits: Defensive-minded No. 5 Gonzaga Prep, the defending state champion, which defeated Puyallup in double overtime in the game before Emerald Ridge’s game.
“Probably one of the top three programs in the state in the last 10 years,” Mullen said. “They’re solid, they do things the right way, they make you work for every possession. So it’s another great challenge for us. We’ve just gotta get ourselves down to earth and come out the way we play.”
Emerald Ridge faces Gonzaga Prep at 7:15 p.m. on Thursday in the semifinals at the Tacoma Dome.