Ron Charrier has believed in Eric Smith all season long, often praising his 5-foot-10 guard for bringing a calming influence to the Kentlake High boys basketball team.<\/p>\n
Smith, a junior, put that calm demeanor on display Friday night at the ShoWare Center in Kent. And, in the process, lifted the Falcons past Kent-Meridian 66-63 in overtime in a key South Puget Sound League North Division game.<\/p>\n
It was Kentlake\u2019s fifth straight win, a streak which was then snapped on Saturday in a 93-52 loss to top-ranked Federal Way.<\/p>\n
The win against the Royals proved key for the Falcons. Kentlake trailed K-M 56-53 with 13 seconds remaining in regulation, when Smith nailed a 3-pointer from the top of the key, breathing life into a Falcon team that had trailed all night.<\/p>\n
Ignited by Smith\u2019s 3-pointer, Kentlake proceeded to outscore Kent-Meridian 10-7 in overtime to seal the win.<\/p>\n
How big was Smith\u2019s shot?<\/p>\n
Kentlake not only trailed the entire night up until his late shot, but also had to come back from a 46-37 deficit late in the third quarter.<\/p>\n
Smith finished with 14 points.<\/p>\n
\u201cEric\u2019s the reason we got going because we came out really slow,\u201d Charrier said. \u201cEric was our ballhandler. He was the reason they couldn\u2019t press us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sid Verma paced Kent-Meridian (1-12, 1-14) with 14 points.<\/p>\n
The win saved Kentlake (6-8 in league, 7-9 overall) from falling behind Auburn Riverside (6-8, 9-9) for the fifth-and-final playoff berth from the SPSL North.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis keeps our season alive,\u201d Charrier said. \u201cIf we would\u2019ve lost, our season would\u2019ve likely been over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Auburn Riverside went on to lose to Jefferson (6-9, 7-11) on Saturday 61-58, thus creating a tie between the Ravens and Falcons for the final playoff berth.<\/p>\n
Kentlake travelled to Auburn Riverside on Tuesday (results unavailable at press time). If the Falcons and Ravens finish the season in a two-way tie, a tie-breaker would be played on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ron Charrier has believed in Eric Smith all season long, often praising his 5-foot-10 guard for bringing a calming influence to the Kentlake High boys basketball team. Smith, a junior, put that calm demeanor on display Friday night at the ShoWare Center in Kent. And, in the process, lifted the Falcons past Kent-Meridian 66-63 in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":232,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-6765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/232"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6765"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}