Senior night is always an important night during a season for any given team, however this one felt different for Wilsonville High School. The Wildcats got to celebrate 5 players in their program (Nick Walters, Ezra Carter, Nick Colyer, Kyle Counts, and Kallen Gutridge).
All five of them bring something different to the table, but all contribute a big piece to a Wilsonville squad that looks to make yet another deep playoff run in 5A. Walters is the team captain and has played a nice role coming off the bench so far this season. Carter has also been a great bench piece or spot starter who has played a lot of minutes and has been a good scorer when given opportunities.
Colyer continues to improve his game and is the glue guy for Wilsonville who contributes a ton on the defensive side of the floor and is a great passer on the offensive side. Counts has been injured for much of the year, but expects to be available for the playoffs in a few weeks and his scoring ability will be a huge boost as Wilsonville enters the month of March. Gutridge has been around for as long as anyone can remember, the 4 year starter is lethal scorer and provides, arguably, the most big game experience in state.
Last night encompassed all of these players strengths, as well as some of the underclassmen that will need to fill their shoes in the next year. Wilsonville came into this matchup trying to keep their perfect league record intact as well and entrench themselves as the #2 seed heading into the playoffs.
Canby meanwhile wanted to play spoiler much like last year when late into the season Canby traveled to Wilsonville took down Wildcats 34-29 to hand Wilsonville their first home loss in over 7 years. Canby also being ranked #14 coming into the matchup looked to solidify a playoff spot in their final regular season game.
Wilsonville got out to a good start leading 20-9 after the first quarter with both Kallen Gutridge and Emmitt Fee both leading the way offensively. Canby tried to battle back and got the offense going a little bit in the second quarter with the halftime score being 35-24 in favor of the Wildcats. The teams traded runs in the second half but in the end Wilsonville was able to put their regular season finale with a final score of 63-55 as Wilsonville collects their 17th straight win and completes the incredibly rare perfect 16-0 league record.
Emmitt Fee was asked after the game what it meant to have such a great performance for Wilsonville on Senior night: “It felt great to represent the Senior class as a whole, going undefeated in league is a great accomplishment but we need to keep the leadership and intensity up in the next 2 weeks to accomplish bigger things.”
Canby is still ranked #14 in 5A as they hope to keep their spot in the playoff bracket, the Cougars leading scorers were Jaxon Lawson with 18 points, Dallas Michel had 10, and Jack Brauckmiller had 8.
For Wilsonville, they are imbedded in the #2 seed in the playoffs and will await to see who their opponent is on Friday night. Their leading scorers were Fee and Gutridge, who both finished with 21 points.
Nick Colyer described how Wilsonville plans to prepare heading into the first round of the playoffs: “We know it will be a hard fought game, we need to stay healthy, make the right choices on and off the court, and study the scouting report before leaving it all out there on Friday.”