The biggest game of the year thus far for both the La Salle Falcons and Wilsonville Wildcats was a thrilling matchup for two NWOC heavyweights, as this game would decide who would take a controlling lead of the conference going down the final stretch of the season.

In this matchup Wilsonville started of hot from the field and a 20-12 lead to end the first quarter. Then during the second quarter while going up for a shot and falling hard Kyle Counts left the game during the halftime break and never returned. Counts has since gotten a cast on a bad wrist injury for the Wilsonville wing.

Kallen Gutridge pronounced this for his injured team mate “Losing Kyle will be a big piece of adversity that we face this year but I have faith in our guys to step up and fill his presence as best as possible”.

Then a couple minutes after that injury, tempers flared when after missing a buzzer beater three pointer La Salle guard Cade Jansen took offense to some words Wilsonville guard Enzo Chimienti shared with him. Jansen then proceeded to shove Chimienti and earn himself a technical foul. After the scuffle and turn of bad luck Wilsonville took a 30-20 lead into halftime and kept chugging away in the third quarter.

heading into the 4th quarter Wilsonville led 44-26. With all the action through three quarters it would be hard to belive that the fourth quarter brought the most action of the night.

Even with an 18 point lead La Salle put their head down and got to work, at one point making it just a two point game between the rivals. Jacob Scacco and Nick Robertson took lead of that La Salle comeback in the 4th that ultimately came up short. Wilsonville kept pace with the Falcons offense and hit free throws down the stretch to Put away La Salle 63-55.

The aforementioned Robertson and Scacco lead La Salle in scoring with 16, and 15 respectively. On the Wilsonville side The Wildcats had multiple players with double digit points including Maxim Wu and Tristan Davis with 13, Logan Thebiay with 12 and Kallen Gutridge with 10.

While asking Kallen Gutridge about being in first place after the win he said this “If we continue to play well we will get some playoff advantages but we gotta play well against the last few teams on the schedule”.

Wilsonville leads the NWOC coming down the home stretch hunting for the top seed in 5a it will be interesting to see what happens over the last couple weeks.