‘Take over Tacoma.’ Silas sinks rival Lincoln with pair of late free throws

Standing outside the locker room after a roller coaster 69-68 Silas High School win against crosstown rival Lincoln on Tuesday, a smile stretched across Trey Collier’s face.

Clearly, this one meant more to him than most wins. Collier, a junior guard, played for Lincoln last year, before transferring to Silas, trading the black and yellow for the red and blue. Any win is sweet, but beating his former team was sweeter.

Advertisement

“It meant a lot, man,” he said. “Especially for me, coming from the other side. I’ve had this circled on my calendar for a minute. So it was great to come out and get the dub.”

He can thank teammate and senior guard MakHai Pleasant-Tolliver, first and foremost. Trailing by one point with under seven seconds to go, Pleasant-Tolliver was fouled shooting with a second left in the game and sent to the free throw line. He sank both to win the game.

“It’s routine,” Pleasant-Tolliver said. “Every day at the end of practice, we shoot 10 free throws and you’ve gotta make them. For me, it was just stepping up and knocking them down, something I do every day.”

Advertisement

For a while, it looked like Silas might run away with it against visiting Lincoln, in front of a packed house at Silas (so packed, in fact, that some fans were turned away before the game when the gym had reached its capacity).

Silas led 42-29 at half, knocking down shots from all over the floor while Lincoln remained cold. But the Abes roared back to life in the second half, turning up the defensive effort and knocking down shots in transition. Guard O’Shea Lamar scored 20 of his 23 points in the second half, including four 3-pointers. Sophomore sensation Davion Shareef-Dulaney also scored 23, while sophomore post Justus Holt added 13.

But Silas weathered the storm and came back late in the fourth quarter.

“We always talk about shot selection,” first-year Silas coach John Barbee said. “I thought we took some good shots but I thought they were early in the shot clock. In the first half, we were making those. You can’t really change the way we play. We do play fast, we do take quick shots, it’s just sticking with the process.

Advertisement

“To win a championship, you have to play defense. Down the stretch, we were able to get a couple big steals there and some good rebounds.”

Lincoln’s free throw shooting woes in the game’s final minutes opened the door for Silas and the Rams knocked it over, chipping away at the lead until the eventual game-winning free throws from Pleasant-Tolliver. He scored a team-high 17 points for Silas. Collier added 15.

Some of the game’s biggest shots came from sophomore Malachi Doss, who scored 12 points and knocked down three 3-pointers in the first half. Sophomore guard Cannon Howard added 11 for Silas, which got contributions from up and down the entirety of its lineup.

For the Rams, this one clearly meant more.

“Every Tacoma game is a takeover game,” Collier said. “We’ve gotta take over Tacoma first before we can get to the big ones.”