One of the first impacts of COVID-19 felt by students was the cancellation of the remainder of the 6a OSAA Basketball Playoffs. At the time both South Salem teams were on a tear. The two seed boys were set to play Lake Oswego in the Quarter Finals and the six seed girls were to play South Medford in the Semi Finals.
We can’t know what the girls, led by recently named 1st team All-State Junior Hilary James, and the boys, led by 2nd team All-State Senior Trey Galbraith, could have accomplished in the playoffs. We can, however, take a look back at South Salem’s electric playoff run from the 2019 season.
Last year, the face of the South Salem’s basketball program was Jaden Nielsel-Skinner who currently attends Portland State University and is a member of the basketball team there. Jaden averaged 20.6 points, 4.6 rebounds, 7.4 assists and 2.8 steals per game his senior year while leading South to a 21-4 regular-season record and the two seed in the playoffs.
In the playoffs, the team beat Roosevelt high school in a 17 point first-round win and then took down West Linn 73-52 to advance to the Quarter Finals against a talented Tigard team.
That year Tigard’s basketball team was very athletic and featured some of Oregon’s top basketball talent. The team was led by senior Stevie Schlabach, Tigard’s all-time leading scorer, and the Junior Drew Carter a dual-sport athlete who was named to the All-State 1st team in 2020 and has received offers from Fresno State, Montana State, Utah State and the University of Nevada to play quarterback. Tigard put up a good fight but South Salem closed out the game 56-46 and moved on to play Jefferson in the Semi-Finals.
Behind Marcus Tsohonis, a 3-star recruit who played at the University of Washington this year, Jefferson proved to be too much for South Salem to handle and edged them out 77-63. Jefferson then moved on to the finals where they played the four seed Jesuit. In a tightly contested game, Jesuit was able to hold off Jefferson in the fourth quarter for a 71-66 win.
You have to wonder what could have happened had South Salem been in the playoff game as the Saxons were one of the only teams who gave Jesuit one of their few regular season losses.
Although this year we aren’t going to know how the playoffs would have played out for South Salem, we can look forward to next year as another up year for the program as there are a handful of returning juniors.
