Undefeated Rams clinch No. 1 seed with win over Yelm. One dad agrees to shave beard

Aaron Wallace probably thought he’d made a safe bet.

His son Garrett is a talented scorer off the bench for the sixth-ranked North Thurston High School boys basketball team, but he doesn’t always get a lot of minutes. So promising to shave his beard if Garrett scored 20 points might have seemed like a harmless bit of motivation.

Get out the razor.

Garrett Wallace scored a game-high 34 points as the undefeated Rams (18-0, 12-0) clinched at least a share of the 3A South Sound Conference championship, and the league’s No. 1 seed entering the district playoffs, with a 91-48 win over Yelm on Friday night in Lacey.

“He’s got that big old trucker beard, too,” Garrett Wallace said. “My teammates were being good to me tonight, finding me and getting me the ball.”

Wallace started along with four other usual substitutes as Rams coach Tim Brown juggled the lineup on a senior night when a whopping nine players were honored.

Wallace made the most of it.

He broke an early 2-2 tie with a cutting layup off a feed from LaDarius Cuyler, and the Rams never looked back.

Wallace scored three 3-pointers before the first quarter was over and finished with six. He won his bet with two minutes into the second half. Had it come earlier, Brown said the scene in the Rams locker room during the intermission might have been unusual.

“If he would have gotten it in the first half, we would have shaved his dad at halftime,” Brown joked. “Garett put on a show. He’s had a few 16- or 18-point games for us, got a little more playing time tonight and made the most of it.”

Although Yelm (0-12, 0-17) was shorthanded — dressing just six players and seeing three of them pick up their third foul before halftime — North Thurston faced a couple of emotional hurdles.

It was the final home game for all but one of the Rams, and they were coming off a buzzer-beating road victory in a rivalry game with Timberline just two days before.

“We had a really good practice Thursday,” Brown said. “It was tough to come down off that high. We started kids who don’t usually start and they did just fine.”

With top scorers Clay Christian and Jeremy Spencer and point guard Gunner Nielsen seated to start the contest, North Thurston nonetheless led 17-10 by the time the usual starters came on in a five-for-five substitution.

Spencer (16 points) and Christian (11) accounted for all the points in an 11-0 second quarter run than ended any doubt. The clock would run for the final four-and-a-half minutes of the game as the Rams took a 41-point lead after a 3-point basket by Jaeger Maxfield.

Nikolus Gonzalez connected for five 3-pointers on his way to a team-high 17 points for Yelm, while sophomore Bradley McGannon, who began the season on junior varsity, added 12.

Though guaranteed at least a share of their first league championship since winning the 2A Evergreen Conference in 2012, and the vital top seed to districts, Brown plans no changes during the Rams’ final two games, against Capital and on the road at Peninsula.

“We’re getting tuned up for the playoffs,” he said. “We’re trying to improve every single day and we’ve got two really good teams ahead of us. Capital and Peninsula are no pushovers.”

This story was originally published January 26, 2018 at 10:21 PM with the headline "Undefeated Rams clinch No. 1 seed with win over Yelm. One dad agrees to shave beard."