Paulsen’s bucket in final seconds lifts Curtis past Olympia

Curtis High School standout Zack Paulsen converted a layup with 5.3 seconds to play, and the Vikings escaped with a win Tuesday night in University Place.

Paulsen scored a game-high 20 points for the Vikings, who remain in first place in the 4A SPSL standings after the narrow 48-46 win over Olympia.

The Bears were in position late to hand Curtis its second loss in league play, but Vikings’ coach Tim Kelly called timeout with 15.3 seconds remaining, and the score knotted at 46-46, to draw up what turned into the game-winning play.

“Last week against Puyallup he drew up the same play,” Paulsen said. “We were in the same position — tie game, 10 seconds left — and we didn’t execute it. So he said, ‘Alright, we have another chance. We’re going to come back and do it again.’

“He wanted us to wait, so they didn’t have that much time to score. We were going to act like we were going to do a handoff, and we were going to backdoor when we’re doing action on the other side. It should have been an open layup, and it was, and that’s how we won.”

Olympia then called timeout to counter, and Ethan Gahm took the ball the length of the court, but couldn’t convert a contested layup as time expired.

Curtis (11-5, 11-1 4A SPSL) has now won four of its last five games after losing four straight during the holiday break, and holds a one-game lead over Rogers atop the league.

“It’s all confidence, and we’re just getting back into it,” Paulsen said. “These games are too close, they shouldn’t be as close as they are right now. We’re going to come back and get it rolling before we get into the playoffs.”

Though, the Bears nearly shook up the standings. Olympia held Curtis to its second-lowest point total of the season — the Vikings scored 43 last week in a loss to Rogers — and nearly pulled off the upset.

Curtis jumped out to a 22-13 lead after the first quarter, aided by three of Paulsen’s four 3-pointers during the contest, but scored just 11 points during the next two periods.

“We just met up as a team and demanded from each other to get ourselves in the game,” said forward Logan Wood, who led Olympia with 13 points. “We knew we were better than what we showed in the first quarter, and our defense really stepped up.”

Wood scored nine of his 13 points in the second half, and gave Olympia its first lead on a turnaround jumper off of the block with 3:25 to go in the third.

The Bears often took advantage of their size advantage in the paint during the second half, and held the lead three times int he second half, but never kept it long.

Lucas Bowser, who added 10 points for the Bears, tied the game at 46-46 on a short jumper with 26 seconds to go, but Paulsen made his game-winning layup on the next possession.

“They’re a really good team,” Paulsen said. “They play defense and they’re very physical. In the first quarter we were hitting a lot of shots. Then they started getting in us and we started backing away from that. We had to fight.”

Olympia (10-6, 7-5) remains on the playoff bubble with four games remaining.

“If we use that momentum — with the way we played in the last three quarters and the way we fought — if we show that fight every night, we can go undefeated the rest of the way in league,” Wood said. “I’m just excited to see what we can do.”

This story was originally published January 16, 2018 at 11:39 PM with the headline "Paulsen’s bucket in final seconds lifts Curtis past Olympia."