News

Jan 16, 2009
by Charlie Pieterick

On Friday, the Pirates displayed their quickness and skill in front of an enthusiastic Pirate home crowd against the athletic but outmanned Life Christian Eagles to take a 54-24 win.  The Eagles, a 2B team from Tacoma used a full-court press from the outset to slow down the fast-running Pirate offense.  In the half-court, they double-teamed Pirate bigman and leading scorer, John Gage.  Vashon was only up 10-4 with 40 seconds left in the quarter, when Max Burnham buried a 3 pointer to signal a taste of things to come.   

During the quarter break, the Pirates appeared to adjust to the Eagles’ defense.  Urged on by a sizeable and boisterous home crowd, they not only outhustled the Eagles for every rebound and loose ball, but pushed the tempo with fast breaks.  When they weren’t running the court, the Pirates were kicking the ball out for 3’s, one each by Burnham and Kerns on back-to-back possessions.  Following the assassins’ trail, Thomas Timm-Skove cleanly picked the pocket of a Life Christian ball handler for two more points.  The result of all this Pirate mayhem was a 20-0 all-Pirate second quarter.  Life Christian was on life support as they left for the half-time break, down 33-4.

Vashon took mercy on the visitors in the second half.  The bench got valuable playing time and showed that they each could be starters on most other league teams.  Michael Stoffer positioned himself to take a hook pass from a driving Timm-Skove for 2 points.  Elias Weston drove the baseline for two, then came straight up the lane for another lay-in, pretzel twisting through three Life Christian defenders to complete the play.  Quinn Holert had a particularly good series in which he hit a clean 10 foot pull-up jumper, stole the inbound pass, and positioned himself to nail a 3-pointer on the resulting possession.    Life Christian could not gain ground on the Pirate bench as they limped off the Island from a 54-24 Pirate thumping.

Pirate Points:  Burnham 10, Gage 8, Hoffman 8, Timm-Skove 7, Wegner 6, Holert 5, Weston 4, Kerns 3, Michael Stoffer 3, Kyle Bakker, Odin Jacobovitch, Chris Pieterick.