Prep Boys Basketball Roundup: Scores and Reports from The Blast Zone

Saturday Night Special — R.A. Long, Mark Morris, Wahkiakum open 2025 with wins

Jordan Nailon / blastzonenews@gmail.com

Young leads R.A. Long in romp over Tenino

The Lumberjacks started slow.

Stop me if you’ve heard that before, but I’ll pinch you so know it’s not deja vu all over again.

It was the same old story for R.A. Long, Saturday, at The Lumberdome, with a familiar outcome and some interesting narrative arcs along the way.

In this case it was a lopsided 80-43 win over Tenino that looked different in the box score than it did in person.

“We got off to a slow start,” R.A. Long coach Jeray Key said in his consistent refrain for the 2024-25 season. “Or, I don’t know what it is but it seems like teams make every shot versus us to start games off.”

And for the first four minutes of the contest, which must have felt like an eternity in the new year, the Jacks looked like they might still be stuck on the other side of the big ball drop. They’d scored just four points while the 1A Beavers of the Stone City had doubled that output in enemy territory.

Austin Gonia led Tenino with 15 points and Jack Burkhardt added 10 on the night.

So what did the dissatisfied hosts do? They doubled down on defense. That’s what they always do.

And with those stops came opportunities to score in transition. And when an extra pass was needed the Jacks made the wise decision to feed Rhet Young in the post for some old school around the world.

“(Young) played a monster game,” Key said. “He was scoring from everywhere in the post — post, face up, mid-range jumpers and free throws. “He had that look in his eye tonight that I have never seen.”