Madras' Matthew Suppah-Scott draws pressure from La Grande's Darek Mcilmoil during Friday's 4A boys basketball semifinal.

FOREST GROVE — The La Grande Tigers had answers at both ends of the floor for almost everything the Madras White Buffaloes threw at them Friday.

La Grande’s Blake Hildebrandt led all scorers with 20 points and Beckett Hutchins had 16 points and six rebounds, pacing the No. 8 Tigers to a 62-56 victory over the No. 4 White Buffaloes in Friday’s semifinals of the OSAA/OnPoint Community Credit Union 4A boys basketball tournament at Forest Grove High School.

Landon Hood added another nine points, seven rebounds, and eight assists to help send the Greater Oregon Conference-champion Tigers into Saturday’s 6:30 p.m. final against No. 6 Marist Catholic, a 63-47 winner over Estacada in Friday’s other semifinal.

“It’s amazing,” Hildebrandt said. “We have an opportunity to win the first championship for La Grande and I think we can put it together.

“It’s just another important game and we’ve already been through a lot of that important stuff, so we’re ready.”

The Tigers (18-10) planted the seeds for this year’s playoff run during a 74-38 playoff loss at Marshfield in the opening round a year ago.

“This is a dream come true, but we’re still hungry,” La Grande coach Shawn Brooks said. “We’ve got one more game. We told these kids at the beginning of the season that we’re a championship-caliber team.

“I don’t think everyone believed it. I know some of us did. The coaching staff did. I don’t know if our community fully did, but they’re watching us now and I know they believe in us now. Hopefully, we can bring the Tigers their first state championship ever.”

La Grande, which averaged a tourney-best 66.5 points a game entering the quarterfinals, had the edge on offense in Friday’s semifinal. The Tigers shot 52.5 percent (21 for 4) from the field with nine 3-pointers, while Madras shot 40.4 percent (21 for 52) with four treys.

The free-margin was a push, the Tigers making 11 of 16 and the White Buffaloes 10 of 18, so the difference in the game was the number of 3-pointers each team made.

“Credit to La Grande,” Madras coach Nick Brown said. “They shot it really well today. They were 50 percent (9 for 18) from 3-point range, so they shot really, really well from distance and they did a good job taking away our 3s.

“That was a big difference for us. And then we just couldn’t get enough stops when we needed them the most.”

La Grande’s defense also made a concerted effort to limit Madras’ Matthew Suppah-Scott, the 6-foot-3 senior post who scored 27 points in Thursday’s 49-43 quarterfinal win over St. Helens.

Suppah-Scott finished with 19 points on 6-for-14 shooting from the field against La Grande, but wasn’t the force under the basket that he’d been a day earlier.

“We didn’t want to make Matthew’s life easy,” Brooks said. “Yesterday, he had a tough match-up against St. Helens and ended up with 27 points on 12-of-16 shooting, so we knew we had to lock him down. If he was going to score 20 points, those points were going to be hard-earned points.

"I feel we worn him down a little bit and he didn’t want to go inside quite as much.” 

Madras’ John Buffalo-Ball knocked down a 3-pointer that gave the White Buffaloes a 20-18 lead with 6:15 to play in the second quarter, but then turned around and drew his third personal, sending the Buffs’ floor-leader to the bench.

Over the next three minutes, La Grande flexed its offensive muscle, mounting a 15-1 run that turned a two-point deficit into a 33-21 lead.

The run started with a pair of 3-pointers by Hutchins, followed by a Hood lay-up, a Derek Mcilmoil 3-pointer, and two Hildebrandt lay-ups — and all with Buffalo-Ball watching from the Madras bench.

“Anytime John’s not on the floor it’s definitely a disadvantage for us,” Brown said. “He’s a first-team, all-league kid and just a great, great player, so it definitely hurt when he wasn’t on the floor.”

La Grande’s Aaden Bonanno made one of two free throws to give the Tigers their largest lead of the game at 44-34 with 4:29 to play in the third quarter.

Madras responded with an 8-0 run, cutting the lead to two points, 44-42, on a pair of Suppah-Scott free throws with 1:42 to play in the third quarter, but that was as close as the Tri-Valley Conference champs came in the second half.

There were four instances in the fourth quarter when Madras cut the deficit to three points — the last time on an Angelo Perez-Perez layup that made it 59-56 with 30 seconds left — but, again, the Buffs never quite turned the corner in their comeback bid.

“Playoff time, every possession matters,” Brown said. “You’ve got to give yourself a chance to score each and every time. We just didn’t give ourselves enough chances, whether it was turnovers or defensively getting out on La Grande’s shooters.

“Those are the little mistakes that added up over the course of a big-time playoff game.”

No. 6 Marist Catholic 63, No. 10. Estacada 47: Gianni Lombardi scored a team-high 21 points on 10-for-11 shooting from the field as the Spartans of Eugene pulled away in the second half of Friday’s second semifinal game against the Rangers.

Marist Catholic’s Gabe Dietmeyer added a double-double with 13 points and 10 assists to help send the Spartans (19-7) into the championship finals for the first time since 2008.

“It was an awesome win,” Lombardi said. “It was all about being physical and outworking the other team. We knew we’d get it down.”

Are the Spartans ready for Saturday night’s showdown against La Grande?

“Yeah, we’re ready,” Lombardi said. “We’ve been ready. Even before we knew we’d be there, we’ve been ready.

“We’ll bring it up another notch. It will be even better than today’s game.”

Marist Catholic opened a 24-21 halftime lead, and then outscored Estacada 23-10 in the third quarter to all but put the game out of reach. The Rangers never got closer than 12 points int the second half and at one point trailed by as many as 20 in the fourth quarter.

“We haven’t been able to say this very often, but we were a little bit bigger than Estacada,” Marist Catholic coach Bart Pollard said. “I was a little bit worried about how physical they played, but we really were able to sustain momentum and get good shots like we always do through their physicality.

“I felt like our movement and skills were the place offensively that we had an advantage. And then defensively, we just grind all though the year. We didn’t change a lot of stuff up. We played man-to-man and that’s what we do, and our identity has been that all the times that I’ve been coaching.”

Estacada (16-10) expended considerable energy in Thursday’s 61-56 quarterfinal win over Hidden Valley and then took the floor again about 17 hours later for one of the biggest games in school history.

Was fatigue a factor?

“I don’t really think it was a factor,” Estacada coach Travis McFarland said. “Marist is a good team. Ultimately, they executed at a high level. They created great looks and then they followed through and made the shots.

“Sometimes, as silly as it sounds, the ball has got to go in. We just fell short.”

Marist Catholic’s Aarav King scored 10 points for the Spartans, who shot 61.5 perent (24 for 39) from the field with five 3 -pointers. They also had a 43-29 edge in points in the paint.

Estacada’s Gavin Gates led all scorers with 22 points and Broden Gates added 11 points for the Rangers, who shot 40.8 percent (20 for 49) from the field with six 3-pointers.

No. 1 Scappoose 66, No. 5 St. Helens 38: Brayden Miller scored 21 points on 8-for-12 shooting from the field and grabbed eight rebounds as the Indians rolled over the Lions in Friday morning’s consolation action.

William Kessi also scored in double-figures for Scappoose with 14 points, while Eijah Greenan Biggs and Trever Olsen added eight points each for the Indians (21-6), who will take on No. 3 Molalla in Saturday’s fourth-place game.

The Lions stayed within striking distance of their Cowapa League rivals until the second quarter when Scappoose went on a 16-4 run to take a 33-16 halftime lead.

St. Helens trailed by at least 15 points the rest of the way, falling to Scappoose for the second time in four meetings this season to finish with an 18-7 record.

Andrew Waite led St. Helens with eight points and eight rebounds, while Orion Wewa had six points and Noah Bigham and Leo Criswell added four points apiece.

No. 3 Molalla 75, No. 15 Hidden Valley 53: Tadyn McGinness scored a game-high 17 points and Kurt Pederson had 15 points, six rebounds, and three steals to help the Indians eliminate the Mustangs from trophy contention.

Garrett Brusseau added 13 points and five assists, and Camdyn Morey also scored in double figures with 12 points as Molalla advanced to Saturday’s 8 a.m. fourth-place game against top-ranked Scappoose.

McGinness scored 10 of his game-high 17 points in the first quarter when the Indians shot a blistering 66.7 percent (12 for 18) from the field and raced out to a 29-15 lead.

Hidden Valley’s Jeremiah Iwamizu connected on a 3-pointer that cut the deficit to eight points, 52-44, with five minutes left in the third quarter, but that was as close as the Mustangs came in the second half.

Cooper Gagnon and Mauricio Mendez led Hidden Valley with 13 points each, while Iwamizu scored nine points on three 3-pointers for the Mustangs (17-10).