The Hawks won the Class 3A boys state basketball championship Saturday at Sullivan Arena with a 65-45 win over Nome, but they have no trophy case for their shiny new trophy.
"We're building one now," coach Dave Thompson said. "The guys in industrial ed will get it done."
Hutchison is a magnet school in Fairbanks that offers everything from vocational education to college-level calculus and other advanced classes.
It's also a magnet for towering basketball players.
The Hawks overwhelmed Nome with their size, outrebounding the Nanooks 41-29 and getting dozens of second shots.
Six-foot-six junior Kevin Rima grabbed nine rebounds, 6-7 senior Reuben Pike had eight and 6-4 senior Ben Snow came off the bench to convert two offensive boards into points to keep his team going in the first quarter when Nome's speed proved initially troublesome.
"Our front line was tough all year," Thompson said. "It causes mismatches."
The final score was deceiving, because three minutes into the fourth quarter, Mikey Wongittilin hit a pair of free throws to pull Nome within four, 44-40.
Offensive rebounding helped spark Hutchison's decisive 13-0 run that followed, with two straight possessions producing putbacks. Rima rebounded teammate Bryant Palm's missed free throw and quickly turned it into two points, and 30 seconds later 6-foot Keenen Mays missed a jumper from the perimeter, but he swooped in to grab his own rebound and score on the putback.
"The offensive rebounding, you saw it -- that killed us," Nome coach Patrick Callahan said. "The effort was there, but sometimes when you're battling that kind of size, you can hang around for so long and then all the offensive rebounds are going to hurt you."
Nome was in the title game for the first time since 1983, when the Nanooks beat Noorvik for the state championship.
In the opening minutes, 5-11 senior Jesse Blandford (15 points, 3 steals) and 6-1 junior Jeremy Head (9 rebounds, 7 points, 3 steals) created mischief by swiping the ball repeatedly.
Nome jumped to an 11-4 lead behind its guard play, but this was a game of spurts, and Hutchison soon battled back.
The championship is the first of any kind for Hutchison, whose best previous finish in a state tournament was second place in this year's small-schools hockey tournament.
The school is named for James T. Hutchison, a pioneering aviation mechanic from Fairbanks. His name used to be attached to the career center there and now will be forever memorialized in the state high school record book.
Kids at Hutchison are career-oriented, Thompson said. Their interests range from construction to mechanics to engineering to architecture.
"I want to be an architect," said Rima, who architected a complete-game effort in the title game with 13 points on 6 of 9 shooting to go with his rebounds and two steals.
He was joined in double figures by Mays (17) and Snow (11), a red-headed senior who couldn't contain his joy.
"We're No. 1!" he said. "It feels amazing."
Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309.
Hutchison 10 13 19 23 -- 65
Nome 13 8 11 13 -- 45
Hutchison -- Pike 6, Palm 7, Erhart 3, Mays 17, Sommer 2, Rima 13, Snow 11, Daniel 6.
Nome -- Leckband 10, Head 7, Blandford 15, Evans 2, Babcock 2, Wongittilin 7, Hawkins 2.
PETERSBURG 58, SEWARD 53
Another scoring spree from Jon Mazzella ignited the Vikings to a third-place finish.
Mazzella furnished 21 points after going for 24 points in each of Petersburg's first two games. Ashon McCay added 12 for the Vikings and Kevin Akers snatched a game-high seven rebounds.
Robert Perea provided Seward a game-high 22 points and Travis Price added 11. Perea scored 59 points in three games.
HERITAGE 44, MONROE 36
Jeremiah Ridgeway's 17 points and Amos Vreeman's 13 points and game-high nine rebounds spurred Heritage to fourth place.
Ridgeway totaled 59 points in three games. Michael Stepovich carried the Rams with a game-high 24 points and team-high seven rebounds, and he averaged 20 points per game in the tournament.
Class 3A Boys All-Tournament Team
Jordan Birchell, Petersburg; Jesse Blandford, Nome; Michael Stepovich, Monroe; Cole Daniel, Hutchison; Jonathan Mazzella, Petersburg; Jeremiah Ridgeway, Heritage Christian; Kevin Rima, Hutchison; Robert Perea, Seward; Jeremy Head, Nome; Justin Sander, Barrow.
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