February 29, 2008
By BEN MCCARTY
News staff writer

The bleary, tired eyes said it all.

Another loss and another rough season in the books for the Hood River Valley boys basketball team.

The Eagles fell to David Douglas 60-35 on Thursday night to wrap up a 3-21 (2-12 in league play) season.

Afterward, a tired-looking Eagles coach Zach Pauls was left to collect the positives of the season, mainly that the did team did not implode internally down the stretch as it did last year.

“I’m really proud of the way seniors led this team this year,” he said.

The Eagles did manage to avoid a last-place finish in the Mount Hood Conference. That dubious distinction went to the Reynolds Raiders who finished with a 1-13 league record. The Raiders’ only league win came against Hood River Valley.

The defeat was the 11th loss by at least 20 points for the Eagles this season and put a damper on the HRV senior night festivities.

The graduating seniors, Andy Kennedy, Shay Huskey, Jeremy Rowley, Adam Williams, Travis Carratt, Jordan Bryant and Thomas Nickel, never knew a winning season during their time at HRV.

This season had enough rough spots to fill four years for others.

The Eagles lost to Sheldon by 60 points to Barlow by 44 and 46-point margins and lost last-minute heart-breakers to Madras and Reynolds.

Combined with a Centennial win, David Douglas’ win over HRV on Thursday locked the Scots into the fourth playoff seed in the MHC. On Tuesday the Eagles lost their second-to-last game 64-57 to Gresham, which claimed the claimed the conference’s No. 5 seed in the state playoffs.

Even though he would have loved to experience more wins, an emotional Adam Williams said that his teammates and coaches made the year worth it.

“I’ve never had a year that was more fun than this,” he said. “I’ll have these guys forever.”

The Eagles were within five points of the Scots at halftime, but would not get any closer in the second half.

That they were in that position at all was largely thanks to Williams, who dropped 19 points, including all five the Eagles scored in the first quarter, on the Scots. No other Eagle scorer had more than Andy Kennedy’s five points.

Even with the Eagles down by over 20 points in the closing minute, Williams was still going hard to the hoop and rolled his ankle. He was replaced with around 30 seconds left by Garrett Garvin to applause from the crowd.

“Sometimes the seniors don’t realize until the end that the end is coming,” Zach Pauls said afterward. “It’s the nature of this senior group that they come to play.”

It was a difficult second season at the helm for Pauls, and things don’t look to get any easier in the future. The team is losing the bulk of its scoring in Kennedy and Williams and Carratt, its point guard in Huskey and a key defensive stopper in Nickel.

One of the bright spots returning to the team next year will be Williams’ younger brother, Tyler, who provided offensive sparks in several games this season.

For Adam Williams, getting to spend the season on the same squad as his younger brother was a special time.

“I’d never gotten to play on the same team as Tyler,” he said. “It brought us closer together.”

Williams also added a few words of encouragement for Pauls, who was visibly emotional in the locker room after the game.

“He’s more than a coach — he’s a friend,” Williams said. “We all love coach Pauls.”

Even though they won only two league games, it was an improvement over the previous season for the Eagles, when they went winless in league play.

In a conference that typically has two good teams at the top and the rest scrambling for the three remaining playoff spots in any given year, the Eagles were not even officially eliminated from playoff contention until the final two weeks of the season.

With the race for the final playoff spots seemingly wide open every year, Pauls wants to see his team become better prepared to compete with the middle of the pack in the conference.

“We’ve got to continue to play hard and develop our skills,” he said. “These kids are resilient and they’ll compete till the end.”

In addition to the team’s seniors, the team also honored manager Cody Sprague and senior cheerleaders Alyce Bofferding and Kathryn Wilson before the game.

JV: The Hood River JV team finished its season with a 61-56 overtime win over David Douglas. The team was led by 20 points from Juan Mendiola, which included 11 points from the free-throw line. Brandon Nelson added 15 points for the Eagles.

Frosh: The HRV freshmen team suffered a 62-40 season-ending loss to David Douglas. Josh Clark led the Eagles with 16 points.