The Mercer Island boys basketball sealed up the No. 3 spot in the KingCo tournament on Thursday, Feb. 9 beating Sammamish 66-46.
The Islanders will move into this weekend’s SeaKing district tournament as the No. 3 seed, playing at 1 p.m. Saturday afternoon at Mercer Island High School against Eastside Catholic.
On Thursday at Bellevue College, the Islanders were up 17-10 at the end of the first quarter. Sammamish narrowed to lead to two points by halftime, ending the first two quarter with a 28-26 score.
After the break, Mercer Island was up 53-38 at the end of the third quarter, followed by adding 13 points in the final quarter to take the win.
Earlier in the week, the Mercer Island boys played their third game against Bellevue in five days, the Islanders appeared to have it within their grasp. A win over the Wolverines and the team would be in the KingCo championship. But in the final moments of Tuesday afternoon’s match, Bellevue snatched away the win. The final score was 46-44.
The Islanders were up 26-24 at the end of the first half, despite a sluggish offensive beginning. The team appeared to hit a stronger stride in the third quarter, even though Bellevue outscored the team 12-11. Mercer Island led 37-32 going into the final minutes of the match.
The Islanders led until the last minute of the game, as Bellevue worked to close the gap and with less than 30 seconds to go, the Wolverines hit a two point basket to lead 45-44.
The Islanders regained possession with 9.1 seconds remaining, on their end of the court, but a Bellevue steal, followed by a foul called on Sean Hughes sealed the win for Bellevue.
Kaleb Warner hit 14 points during the game, with Jeff Lindquist adding eight and Joe Rasmussen seven points. Brian Miller had five overall, with Hughes earning four and both Sam Cohn and Parker Scott hitting three points.
Mercer Island will face Sammamish during the third/fourth place game on Thursday at Bellevue College at 3 p.m. The team is guaranteed a spot into the SeaKing district tournament, which begins next week, but Thursday’s game will determine seeding.
