Columbia of Burbank rattles Brewster for Class 2B boys basketball regional win

Coyotes force Bears into 31 turnovers to move straight into state quarterfinals next week in Spokane

RICHLAND, Wash. - College basketball fans may remember Arkansas men’s basketball coach Nolan Richardson and his “40 minutes of Hell” Razorbacks who won the 1994 NCAA Championships with its defensive pressure and run-and-gun style.

On Friday night, Todd Schumacher’s Columbia-Burbank boys showed the crowd at Richland High’s Dawald Gym what the high school version might look like.

Call them the “32 Minutes of Hell” Coyotes, who forced 31 turnovers and ran Brewster off the court in a 93-72 Class 2B regional victory.

“It’s great. It’s heaven on our end,” said a smiling Schumacher, who felt before the game his team would play well.

“But I didn’t think we’d play that well,” he said.

With the win, Burbank gets to skip over the Wednesday, loser-out round at the Spokane Arena. Instead, the Coyotes jump right into the Thursday quarterfinals and are guaranteed at least two more games.

Brewster, meanwhile, must play on Wednesday in Spokane in that loser-out round.

The two teams battled over the first two quarters in a high-speed contest and Burbank led 42-39 at intermission.

“We started the game, we had a little nerves,” said Schumacher, whose team is now 22-1. “But we worked our way back, and then the dam burst.”

It broke open early in the third quarter, as the Coyotes kicked things into overdrive.

After Brewster’s Kelson Gebbers sank a short jumper to cut Burbank’s lead to 44-43, Quincy Scott quickly answered with a 3-point field goal.

That jump-started a 16-2 run that put Burbank in control of the game, and the Coyotes were never threatened after that.

In that run, all 16 points were scored by Burbank’s Big Three — Tristan Frimodt (6 points), Michael Lenke (7) and Scott (3).

In the end, it was Scott who led the Coyotes with 29 points, well over his average of 17.5 points per game.

Frimodt added 23 points and 7 rebounds, while Lenke finished with 18 points.

Scott said the Coyotes are on a mission.

“Last year, the state committee put us in there as a 10 [seed],” he said. “That rubbed us the wrong way. This time around, we thought we’d be a 1 or a 2. But we were a 4.”

The two teams had met back in December in the SunDome Shootout in Yakima. Burbank had won that game, 74-56. So, there was a little trepidation on the Coyotes’ side of the ball on what the Bears might throw at them this time.

“We were concerned about Kelson Gebbers. He’s a University of Portland commit, he can go off for 30 or 40 points any night,” Scott said. “And we knew they were a scrappy team.”

Gebbers finished with 23 points and 13 rebounds, as the Bears fell to 17-6. But Burbank turned out to be scrappier.

And the partisan crowd was entertained with the high speed play.

“We run a lot of 5-on-5 in-game conditioning at practice, and it makes us better,” said Scott. “It’s nice to play on a Thursday.”

Schumacher said that’s the key thing from this victory.

“People don’t understand how important it is to win this game,” he said. “Now we don’t have to play four games in a row. By the fourth day, the legs are wiped out. But it’s also so draining emotionally. It’s so emotional. Now we get an extra day of rest.”