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Monday, March 18, 2024
March 18, 2024

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King’s Way Christian boys basketball team rolls to state

Knights face Seattle Academy in 1A regionals

By , Columbian Sports Editor
Published:

How did the King’s Way Christian boys basketball team celebrate the roll that led to its first Class 1A state tournament berth?

By rolling a few objects of its own.

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Before getting down to the business of Saturday’s playoff game in Renton against Seattle Academy, the Knights went bowling.

“We worked on having them play through trash talk,” coach Daven Harmeling said.

It has taken more than a few choice words to throw off King’s Way this season. The Trico League champion Knights (18-6) have won 13 of their last 14 games, the only blemish being a district tournament loss to Castle Rock.

There’s one big reason for that success — Kienan Walter.

The Trico League MVP is a coach’s dream and a matchup nightmare for opposing defenses. At 6-foot-8, the junior post can play near the basket, step out to shoot a 3-pointer and beat defenders off the dribble.

Despite being double-teamed most of the season, Walter led the league in scoring at nearly 24 points per game.

“It’s great to have that go-to guy when things aren’t going well,” junior guard Kyle Gonzales said. “We all look up to him. Because he’s 6-foot-8, we kinda have to.”

Walter might be tall, but at 175 pounds he’s lanky despite his best efforts to put on weight.

Opponents have tried to neutralize Walter by banging him around.

“He gets everybody’s best shot,” Harmeling said. “They try to play physical with him. But he’s able to overcome that because he has such great balance.”

Walter said his game and mental approach had to evolve once defenses began focusing on him.

“I definitely had to be more patient,” he said. “I’d get frustrated. In the first quarter, I had to be careful about not forcing stuff.”

But Walter hasn’t had to do it alone. When defenses focus on him, it opens scoring chances for teammates, especially for Kyle Gonzales, Arda Aydin and Cole Jensen.

“They know our gameplan really well, but it doesn’t matter,” Aydin said. “We trust our offense, so it doesn’t matter what they do.”

“They usually have to double-team him,” said Jensen, the team’s leader in 3-pointers. “For me that’s really a big part of why I score. It’s a pretty easy reverse, and I’m wide open.”

King’s Way made the Class 1B state playoffs in 2012 and placed fifth. A win Saturday would put the Knights among the 1A tournament’s final eight teams that play at the SunDome in Yakima.

“The bigger the stage, the more you trust the process,” said Harmeling, who played at Washington State from 2006-09. “All of the guys that are coaches here played college ball, so we can all relate to how nervous we’ve been before certain games. What helped all of us was not to worry about the outcome of the game, but to trust the process.”

And it helps when the process includes a 6-foot-8 league MVP.

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