Southridge's Elijah Thompson (with ball) draws pressure from Westview's Landen Shelley during Friday's Metro League showdown.

BEAVERTON — There was no quit in the Westview Wildcats on Friday night.

Westview’s Dayton Jenkins scored a game-high 22 points and Justin Cheng finished with 13 to help rally the Wildcats to a 58-49 victory in double overtime over the No. 2-ranked Southridge Skyhawks in a Metro League thriller at Southridge High School.

Ian Bautista added 11 points for the Wildcats (11-4, 3-0 Metro), who rallied from a 28-20 deficit with just under three minutes to play in the third quarter and drew even at 43-43 on a Jenkins jumper with 1:26 to play in regulation.

Tied at 46-46 at the end of the first overtime, Westview’s Dash Nicely scored the go-ahead basket off an offensive rebound on the opening possession of the second OT.

From there, the Wildcats put the game away with free throws, going 10-for-16 at the foul line over the final three minutes to stun the Skyhawks (12-4, 2-1) on their home court.

“It felt amazing to win that game,” said Jenkins, the Wildcats’ 6-foot-2 senior forward, who scored five of his 22 points in overtime. “Southridge has a great team with some great shooters, so we just really wanted to run ‘em off the 3-point line and … it really worked.”

Said Westview coach Mike Wolf: “That was fun. It was just two really good teams going toe-to-toe for a long time. Ultimately, it was just sort of gut-check time, and then get a stop and make a play.

“I think they were tired, we were tired, and it helped that we got a couple layups and some free throws to pull away and then we forced them into some tough, mid-range shots because they’re so good from beyond the arc.”

Elijah Thompson led Southridge with 21 points, but was the only player to score in double figures for the Skyhawks, who struggled to find any soft spots in the Wildcats' defense.

“We never could quite separate,” Southridge coach Phil Vesel said. “We had a couple of opportunities. We got the lead to eight with possession and then Westview hit some timely shots. 

“But I thought the difference in the game was the rebounding. Westview got so many big offensive rebounds. We would play great defense for 26 seconds and then they would get an offensive rebound. They went early to the boards and we watched to see if the shot went in or not instead of hitting guys. And the tighter the game got, the more that we watched.”

Early in the fourth quarter, Bautista missed a 3-pointer for Westview, but Nicely was there to grab the offensive rebound and score to cut Southridge’s lead to 33-31 with seven minutes remaining.

Two minutes later, the Wildcats grabbed another offensive rebound and kicked it out to Cheng for a 3-pointer that tied the score at 36-36.

After Jenkins’ jumper made it 43-43, Southridge called a timeout with 34 seconds left. The Skyhawks ended up getting two good looks from long range — one by Drew Groenig and another by Thompson — but both missed the mark and the game went to overtime.

“Down the stretch, we had opportunities,” Vesel said. “We had two good looks and they were both halfway down. If either one of those … you know, we’re having a different conversation, right?”

In the first overtime, Jenkins scored three points for Westview on a jumper and one free throw, while Thompson answered for Southridge with a 3-pointer that tied the score at 46-46 with 16.3 seconds left.

The Wildcats then opened the second overtime on a 10-3 run as they scored on six of their first  seven possessions, including four made free throws by Bautista, two by Jenkins, one by Nicely, and another by Landen Shelley. And Kellen Simantel’s two free throws with 10.4 seconds to play helped seal the decision.

“It was a good, physical game,” Vesel said. “I thought Westview was more physical than us and it kind of put us on our heels. I don’t know the rebound differential, but I know that we got beat on the boards pretty handily and their second-chance points were the difference to me.”

The only other team to hold Southridge to fewer than 50 points this season? Central Catholic, which downed the Skyhawks 62-43 in the third-place game at last month’s Les Schwab Invitational.

So, give some credit to Westview’s defense for holding the Skyhawks 20 points below their season scoring average on Friday.

“Southridge has to be among the top five teams in the state in scoring average and we led the state in defensive scoring average last year,” Wolf said. “That’s kind of what we’ve hung our hat on. We knew the pace of play had to be a little bit slower, and if Southridge got into the 60s or 70s, we weren’t winning. We knew we had to slow it down.”

When the Skyhawks went into halftime leading 18-14, the Wildcats sort of had them right where they wanted them, right?

“At halftime, my assistants wanted to talk about our defensive breakdowns,” Wolf said. “I said, ‘Hey, we just held one of the highest scoring teams in the state to 18 points in a half. Our problem isn’t defense. It’s getting shots and moving the ball.

“Southridge is really good at switching and creating problems with their length and athleticism. They play so hard on defense that we just couldn’t find good shots. So, we moved the ball around a little bit, moved some people around a little bit, and found some ways to get the ball in the hole, which feels good.”

Vesel said the Skyhawks got drawn into playing Westview’s game.

“It was their tempo,” Vesel said. “That’s how they wanted to play the game. They run long possessions. They wanted to shorten the game and have less possessions. It was a battle that way. And because we missed some of our transition3-pointers and other transition shots, the game became their tempo, for sure.

“You tip your hat to Westview. They had a great game plan. They took us out of a lot of stuff that we wanted to run, they were physical, and their two best players — Ian Bautista and Dayton Jenkins — played great.”

Also, while the rest of the Metro League played games on Tuesday, Westview had a bye, giving the defending league champions extra time to prepare for Friday’s showdown.

“The bye on Tuesday gave us a little extra time to really work against what Southridge does well and see if we could disrupt it and take it away,” Wolf said. “We talk about just trying to make it difficult to play against us and then living in the difficult, loving the difficult. Our kids have embraced that part of it.”

Said Vesel: “We were feeling pretty good about ourselves, but league play has a tendency to do this to you. League play is a totally different world. What you do in the preseason, it’s great and it really helps with power rankings and your RPI and it’s fun, but always when you get to league play, the game changes. 

“We’ve got to lick our wounds a little bit and figure out how we can adjust, because you know the game plan that Westview came up with, other teams are going to watch the film and they’re going to be like, ‘Hey, you’ve got to slow ‘em down and pack it in; grind it and be physical.’ Then again, grab and hold when you’re coming off screens isn’t a new thing in league play. It’s more the norm.”

Jesuit and Westview are still undefeated in league play at 3-0, but that will change on Tuesday when those two teams face off in a 7 p.m. game at Westview.

The last team to go undefeated in league play was Jesuit in the 2014-15 season, so it’s not unusual for the Metro League champ to emerge from the regular season at least one blemish in league play.

“The league’s too good,” Wolf said. “Too many good coaches, too many good players, and it’s hard to be consistent for that many games with this many good teams. I’m pretty sure if we win ‘em all, one at a time, then we’ll end up undefeated. But this group is really good about being focused on what’s next.”

This is also a Westview team that many believed would take a step back after graduating seven seniors from last year’s Metro League championship team that reached the 6A semifinals at the Chiles Center.

But this group has picked up where that group left off. And it showed again on Friday night.

“We came out with a chip on our shoulder,” Bautista said. “We know people thought we weren’t going to be as good as we were last year. We graduated seven seniors, and other than me and Dayton, nobody had much varsity experience, but … we didn’t let that stop us.

“We’re never discouraged. Whenever we’re down, we’re up. We play as hard as we can all game and that’s what we’re going to do. That’s how we practice. There’s no funny business over here.”

Said Jenkins: “We’re back. We’re back and we’re here to stay.”