Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com

By Ray Hamill — The McKinleyville Panthers are back in familiar territory.

After taking care of business in their Dick Niclai Tournament semifinal with a 76-61 win over Hoopa at College of the Redwoods on Tuesday night, the Panthers will play in Friday night’s championship game at Lumberjack Arena, as they look to secure a second straight tourney title and a third in four years.

The championship showdown against St. Bernard’s will also give them an opportunity to avenge two early-season losses to the Crusaders in what will be a battle of conference champions.

The McKinleyville boys wasted little time taking control of Tuesday’s game, enjoying the better of the early exchanges and opening up a 10-point lead in the first quarter, before stretching the advantage to as many as 21 late in the second.

And while the Warriors would narrow the gap in the second half, ultimately there was no way back for the Little 4’s No. 2 seeds going up against the best team in the Big 5 this year.

McKinleyville head coach Chris Davis wanted to use his bench as much as possible, and it worked as the Panthers quickly put the disappointment of losing to rival Arcata in their conference finale last week behind them and got back to winning ways.

“We did a nice job of pushing the tempo to keep the game at the pace that we wanted tonight,” Davis said. “We wanted to utilize our bench throughout the night.”

The Warriors gave the Panthers plenty of problems despite losing by 15 points.

However, too many mistakes proved costly and the Hoopa players were ultimately unable to overcome the sizable first-half deficit.

The Panthers went on a 14-6 run to break an 11-11 tie and close out the first quarter, and they never looked back.

“We turned the ball over 17 times and we were right in the game, but we made some crucial turnovers right at the end of the first quarter,” Hoopa head coach Inker McCovey said. “They got a little run on us because we threw the ball backwards instead of forwards.

“Overall, I think that we could have won the game.”

McKinleyville’s Henry Turner got the tournament off to an impressive start and finished with a team-high 20 points in the win, while teammates Jeremiah Smith and Neil Moon each added 11 points.

Bode Douglass also had nine points for the Big 5 champs.

Moon was equally impressive on defense and was tasked with guarding Hoopa sharpshooter Malakai McCoy, holding him in check for much of the night.

“Neil did a great job on Malakai tonight and held him to two points,  while the rest of our defense did pretty good pressuring throughout the game, getting deflections and steals leading to high percentage shots,” Davis said.

“Bode had a nice well-rounded offensive game tonight, passing the ball well, making well-timed cuts away from the ball, and good decisions when to be aggressive taking the ball to the rack.”

The Warriors, to their credit, gave the Big 5 champs more problems than they did when the two teams met earlier in the year, matching up far better.

“Really impressed with the growth from Hoopa compared to when we saw them earlier in the season,” Davis added. “They’ve got some great young talent developing very well and coach Inker is doing a good job with them.

“Looking forward to seeing them play in their sections.”

Some missed easy layups didn’t help matters for the Little 4 school.

“Overall, I think that, you know, we played alright, but not great,” McCovey said, “They got a lot of fast breaks on us.”

No scoring stats were immediately available for the Warriors, who closed out the H-DNL season with a record of 12-12.

The Panthers improved to 18-8.