Last man standing: No. 4 Pullman boys beat West Valley in 2A District 8 title, nab lone regional berth

The Greyhounds, 2A GSL champs, emerged with the lone berth on top of an ultra-competitive District 8 playoff.

SPOKANE,Wash. — Pullman head coach Craig Brantner was chirping at his team all evening, urging them to get hands up, apply more pressure, box out and attack the rim.

Message(s) received.

The Greyhounds (21-1), No. 4 in SBLive's 2A power rankings and winners of eight in a row, earned a spot in regionals with a 58-39 District 8 2A championship win over the Eagles (17-5) on Saturday in the Spokane Arena.

“I thought our kids did a great job of working hard and playing hard, I was happy with our overall effort,” Brantner said.

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The effort was noticeable from the tipoff, as Pullman raced around the court, cutting toward the paint
and kicking it out for 3’s.

They jumped out to a 19-11 lead after the first quarter and took a 40-91 lead at half. The Greyhounds knocked down six 3s in the first half.

Three of those came from point guard Tanner Barbour who was a force all night, scoring a game-high 20 points.

“I felt great, when the shots start falling, it’s easy to play,” Barbour said. “Once you make your first few,
then you’re loose and it becomes easier to shoot and feel more comfortable doing it.”

The junior also was tasked with slowing down West Valley’s playmaker Turner Livingston, holding the senior to 13 points.

“I was ready, I have been doing this all year, chasing the best player,” Barbour said. “It is fun, I like playing defense.”

Barbour jumped passing lanes, leading to easy points and made timely buckets all night.

Even after the Eagles made a concerted effort to slow down the Greyhound’s perimeter shooting, Pullman continued to hold its 20-point lead. Pullman had only one 3-pointer find the bottom of the net in the second half.

That disparity can be attributed to the Eagles switching to a zone defense, forcing Pullman to pound it inside.

That is when senior Grayson Hunt took over, scoring eight of his 12 points in the second half. His foot even blew out of his right shoe during a post move.

“We went into halftime, we really stressed trying to attack the basket, hoping to use more clock, use a little more clock, not just shoot an early 3,” Brantner said.

The Greyhounds missed five layins in the third quarter, but Brantner knew the gameplan of attacking the basket was the right recipe to advance to regionals.

So was playing suffocating defense and crashing out on the shooters.

“We know they are a very good shooting team, they’re capable of getting hot and hitting a lot of 3s, so we wanted to run them off the line and force them into our big man Grayson,” Barbour said.

Pullman matched West Valley’s 13 points in the fourth quarter and have a trip to regionals next on its itinerary.

Its last loss was at West Valley on Jan. 25. Pullman went 2-1 in the three matchups between the league foes.

---Justin Reed; @JustinReed99.