Bam Paschal's scoring fury powers Central Catholic boys basketball back to 6A title game
ST. JOHNS — It couldn’t have been written any better for the Central Catholic boys basketball team to earn a berth back to the 6A championship game over its crosstown rival Jesuit.
The Rams thrilling 65-59 comeback victory on Friday, March 13 in Chiles Center was simply sweet revenge after bowing out last year to this same Jesuit team in the quarterfinals.
And who better to lead it than four-year varsity starter Bam Paschal, having a nuclear final quarter by dazzling the packed Chiles Center with 19 points on a perfect 7-for-7 from the field and outscoring the Crusaders’ entire team in that span.
It was just the dominant performance that Central Catholic knew it needed from the senior point guard after having a rough quarterfinal game against Grant, only managing four points due to foul trouble. Paschal also missed the second half of last season due to injury.
“Just go (for it),” Paschal after finishing with 23 points. “That’s been our mindset this whole season. Our whole team was like, ‘(go for it), fight. Never give up. This is what we want.’”
He added: “I just trusted my teammates. It’s not all about scoring. I was trying to get it on the other end, but then I was able to flip it on.”
Central Catholic head coach David Blue couldn’t have been prouder to see Paschal shine in this moment after an injury-riddled junior year that the 2024 state champion has come back from.
“To come back this year and do what he did today, just speaks so much to his character and his family and the strength that they have and his resilience,” Blue said after the game.
Even with Paschal’s game, Jesuit looked ready to bounce Central Catholic with its scorching shooting with Joe Stimpson leading with 17 points and Major Williams added 12.
The Crusaders jumped out to a quick 6-0 lead and kept on slamming the door on the Rams throughout the game. It wasn’t until midway through the fourth quarter that Isaac Bongen put the Rams up 52-51.
“We should be used to it after last year,” Blue said. “They did it very similarly last year, just knocking down shots.”
He added: “We were playing a little hero ball in the second quarter and into the third quarter, trying to get everything back at once, but we just had to chop wood, one stop at a time, one possession at a time. It's a long game. So we just had to make sure that we were, we just had to make sure that we stayed with it over time, because we weren't going to do it all at once.”
Malcolm Weatherspoon and Robbie Long III both added 12 points; Weatherspoon also had a clutch 3-point play in the fourth quarter with an aggressive drive to bring the deficit to 51-50.
After the game, you could hear coach Blue outside the team locker room tell his team, “One last battle! One last battle!”
And Blue couldn’t be more right with a battle set against Tualatin on Saturday to try to claim its second title in three years after exorcizing last year’s demons with this win over Jesuit. Even looking into the stands you could see Duce Paschal and other players from the 2024 championship team that came to support this iteration of the Rams.
“We had a lot of expectations, and we fell short,” Blue said. “There was a lot of adversity after last year's loss and over the summer, we had people come, we had people go.
“But having these young men that stayed and trusted me and trusted our staff and trusted our Central Catholic community, they just stayed together and banded together throughout the year. I'm just so proud of them getting to this point.”
