‘Just an amazing group of kids.’ 2nd in football, 1st in boys basketball: Tualatin goes wire-to-wire as state’s No. 1 team, turns back Summit for 6A title
By René Ferrán | Photos by Ken Waz | Video by Taylor Balkom
Josiah Lake rebounded one final Summit miss and threw the ball ahead to Tualatin teammate Peter Burke.
For a second, Burke looked set to streak to the basket to put an exclamation point on the Timberwolves’ first OSAA Class 6A boys basketball state championship Saturday evening.
Instead, he gathered the ball in and between dribbles, gestured and exhorted the Tualatin student body roaring above him in the Chiles Center stands to start the celebration.
At the other end of the court, Malik Ross had only one thought:
Can the clock just hit zero?
When it finally did, Ross and the Timberwolves soaked in the moment. The top-ranked team in the state all season finally erased the memory of their defeat in the 6A football state final four months ago, downing the previously undefeated Storm 66-49 to win the program’s first title.
“Oh my goodness, this is the best feeling in the world,” said Ross, a unanimous all-tournament selection who had 12 points and four assists in his final high school game. “To compare the feeling after the football championship and this one, it definitely avenges it.
“We’ve been waiting to do this all season long, and when it finally hit zero, we finally got to celebrate. We’ve got some more celebrating to do in the locker room, but I’m just so thankful and blessed to play with such a great group of guys.”
Senior guard Noah Ogoli led the Timberwolves (26-2) with 24 points and nine rebounds, including seven in a 12-0 first-half run that gave them a lead they never relinquished.
“Ever since we lost that football state championship, a lot of us who played basketball, like half the team, we knew we had a big goal,” Ogoli said. “We did not want to fall short twice.”
Lake chipped in 12 points and 15 rebounds and Burke had 12 points while having the primary task of slowing down Summit standout Caden Harris, a Chico State commit who led the Storm (27-1) with 15 hard-earned points on 6-of-17 shooting and 11 rebounds.
“He’s such a great all-around player, so I was trying to do anything I could to just try to slow him down a little bit, make him take a tough shot,” Burke said. “You’ve got to stop his mid-range game — he loves his fadeaways, his floaters; he’s good at that — but he can hit the three, too, so I just had to keep pressure on him all the time.”
Burke also was one of several Timberwolves who made their way to the other end of the court to offer a hand up to Summit players who collapsed to the floor and put an arm around them.
After all, Burke and many of his teammates understood exactly how they felt. Fourteen weeks earlier, it had been them who needed consolation after falling 44-14 to Central Catholic at Hillsboro Stadium.
“Yeah, I know how it feels,” Burke said. “You know, all season, those guys are a great, great team. A couple of them are going to play college basketball, so I told them, ‘Go do your thing, go be successful at the next level.’”
Besides Harris, the Timberwolves had to deal with senior guard Julian Mora, the Mountain Valley player of the year who battled foul trouble all evening and finished with 10 points on 5-of-16 shooting with four assists.
Ogoli started on him, but after getting two first-quarter fouls, Ross switched on him, using his physicality to wear him down.
“They put the defensive player of the year on him, and you know, I did my thing on him,” Ross said.
The Timberwolves led 20-9 after Burke hit a three-pointer from the top of the arc with six minutes to go in the second quarter. The Storm chipped away at the deficit, getting within three at 33-30 on Harris’ baseline drive and dunk with 5:27 left in the third.
But Tualatin again went on a run, outscoring Summit 12-4 the rest of the period, with five players contributing to push the lead to 45-34 after three.
“Everyone has their nights with this team,” Ogoli said. “We all feed off each other really well. We’ve been playing together since like the fourth or fifth grade, so I just feel like that chemistry just keeps on building on and off the court and helps us get going.”
The Storm, who erased a 10-point deficit against Roosevelt in the quarterfinals to keep their dream of a perfect season alive, weren’t about to go away easily in the final.
Once again, they mounted a rally, with Collin Moore’s three-point play off a backdoor cut with three minutes left cutting Tualatin’s lead to 52-46. Moore, a sophomore, and senior Carson Cox scored eight points each.
Thirty seconds later, Harris’ putback again drew the Storm within six, 54-48, but Ogoli’s steal and layup with 1:46 left pushed the lead back to double digits, and the Timberwolves salted the win away at the foul line. They hit 12 of 14 free throws in the fourth quarter.
“We kept the game at that six- to eight-point margin, but we just couldn’t quite get over the hump,” said Summit coach Jon Fraizer. “Throughout the year, we’ve always had a run in us, where we’ve been able to string together three or four big shots.
“But credit to them defensively, because they didn’t allow us to go on a run. Anytime it felt like we were getting some momentum, they answered. They did a really good job of getting shots around the hoop.”
The Storm hoped to become the first Bend school to win a state title and the first undefeated 6A champion since Jefferson capped a 28-0 season in 2000 by beating Tualatin in the Timberwolves’ only previous appearance in the final.
Instead, they became the first big-school team since Grant in 1977 to fall one win shy of perfection in the final.
“This group is really special,” Frazier said. “We’ve been together since the fourth grade, and to see the journey they’ve been on, it’s just a testament to how hard they’ve worked. As a program, they’ve taken what was a very strong program and elevated it to somewhere where we’ve obviously never been before.
“So, for me, it’s like, we just try to enjoy every step along the way. Obviously, we envisioned it being us down there cutting the nets down, but hopefully that’ll change really quick, and all we’re going to have is just fond memories of the relationships we built, the journey that we’ve been on and the success that they’ve had.”
It’s a journey Tualatin coach Todd Jukkala could relate to. After a 13-year run as the school’s girls basketball coach, he served as an assistant to longtime coach Rick Osborn for three seasons before taking charge four years ago.
Jukkala immediately took stock of what he had coming up in the program — especially a trio of then-freshmen, Ogoli, Ross and Burke, who entered the starting lineup a year later.
That team lost in the first round of the 2020 playoffs, but Jukkala knew he’d bring in a strong junior class led by Lake joined by seniors Kellen Hale and Ashton Rose to form what he thought might be a title contender the following season.
Then, the pandemic hit, wiping out not only the 2020 state tournament but the 2021 as well. The Timberwolves went 11-5 during the spring season, setting the stage for this year’s run, culminated by their 16th consecutive victory in becoming the first 6A school since West Linn in 2015-16 to rebound from losing the football final to win the basketball title.
“I knew we had a chance to be really good,” Jukkala said as the celebration Ross predicted raged behind him in the locker room. “But it was whether the younger players were going to develop, which was a big if because of the year the pandemic took away from us. These seniors got their junior year basically taken away from them.
“So yeah, I thought we could be good, but especially with all the roadblocks thrown in our faces with the pandemic, you just didn’t know if things would come together. We didn’t know, which makes all this even more special. Just an amazing group of kids.”
