HILLSBORO, Ore.-- The last time head coach Gary McKnight and his Mater Dei team left Liberty High School after the final game of the Les Schwab Invitational, their heads were down and body language sullen.
The Monarchs came so close to winning the premier holiday tournament in 2017. They made it unscathed to the championship game, but met its match against an even more talented East Coast powerhouse in Oak Hill Academy and lost 67-55.
Now, two years later, Mater Dei was the team celebrating with the four-foot-tall tournament bracket and wearing the championship caps. The Monarchs knew just how hard it was to win the tournament, and they relished every second of their wire-to-wire 70-58 victory over Washington’s Eastside Catholic.
“A lot of work went into this,” McKnight said. “A lot of video during the night, during the day we practice. We took it very seriously to be the best that we could be and to be prepared, and the boys really listened.”
With the win, Mater Dei (12-2) prevented the Crusaders (7-1) from becoming the first program to win Les Schwab’s “The Eight” tournament alongside winning the primary 16-team tournament.
Mater Dei guard Devin Askew led all scorers with 22 points, eventually winning tournament MVP, but on Monday night he had plenty of help as teammates Aidan Prukop, Harrison Hornery, and Wilhelm Breidenbach finished in double-figures.
And while the Monarchs led the entire night, the Crusaders made it difficult for the Californian team to pull away throughout the second half. In the third quarter, Eastside Catholic’s Patton Lanier, who finished the game with eight points off the bench, nailed back-to-back triples to help his team pull to within two.
However, time after time, Mater Dei quelled the aggressive comeback attempts thanks to their unforgiving and tenacious defense. Junior forward Harrison Hornery noted that senior guard Ryan Evans, who finished with two points on three total shots, made the play of the game by stealing the ball from Eastside stud Nolan Hickman. That steal turned into a breakaway and-one lay-in for Askew which extend the Monarch’s lead to seven late in the game.
“It seems like we hit a big shot every time they made a run,” McKnight said. “We just kept that five-point lead and we just kept matching them, and our defense was pretty solid.”
While Mater Dei finished the tournament strong, Hornery didn’t believe that his team was playing to its potential earlier on in the week. Despite wins over Jesuit and Central Catholic, it was Saturday night’s victory against Norcross in which he noted that the Monarchs began to peak.
“Half of these last three games we haven’t really been playing our games, but once we got back to that then we were fine,” Hornery said.
Guards Shane Nowell and Hickman, the two four-star prospects with multiple division-one offers that led the Crusaders to the championship game, finished with a combined 24 points and ten rebounds. The two juniors were never really able to get going and Mater Dei’s stingy defense deserves the credit for slowing what looked to be a potent attack throughout the four-day tournament.
Sure, the Crusaders couldn’t win it all for a second-consecutive winter. It’s hard to win eight-straight tournament games. Seven wins in eight attempts are nothing to scoff at, and on Monday night they proved their mettle by giving the Monarchs all that they could handle at times.
Two years ago Eastside Catholic was a relatively unknown program. Now they are proving just how the addition of “The Eight” tournament can improve the Les Schwab Invitational as a whole by increasing the talent field. If a 3A school from Sammamish, Washington can win one tournament and remain competitive in a more difficult one, then what is stopping another relatively unknown program from doing the same thing?
On the other end, the Monarchs now have a relatively tough stretch coming up with games in West Virginia and Massachusetts before league play, but winning its first Les Schwab Invitational? Well, now they have a huge weight lifted off their backs.
“I tell them that this is why they came to Mater Dei,” McKnight said. “This is a game that hopefully gets us ready so that we win the last game of the season.”
And, as Hornery concluded with a sly smile: “It’s way better to finish first than runner up.”
