ISSAQUAH — When the Olympia Bears’ backs have been against the wall in this postseason, the veteran squad hasn’t wavered.
John Kiley’s team won three straight elimination games in the District 3 4A Tournament to qualify for the state tournament for the sixth straight year. But in the 4A state opening round against Redmond at Issaquah High School Friday night, Olympia’s fight could only last for four quarters when a fifth was needed.
Extra time was necessary after a wild ending to the fourth quarter. On what appeared to be a game-winning, and-one layup by Redmond senior guard Drew Prinos Grumbach, he was instead called for an offensive foul, with Olympia senior guard Brody Cronk drawing the charge with half a second remaining.
But the 15th-seeded Bears ran out of fuel in overtime, as the Mustangs outscored them 11-2 over the final four-minute frame and held them scoreless for the last three minutes to win 60-51 in overtime, ending Olympia’s season.
“There was a lot of emotion. A lot of tears. I told them that I’m proud of them, proud of their buy-in,” Kiley said of his locker-room message after the game. “I’m proud of their work, their toughness, their grit that they’ve shown over the last couple of weeks getting here and tonight. Redmond is a heck of a team, and we went toe to toe.”
Olympia led briefly to start the game as Cronk and Brian Stevenson scored the first two buckets for the Bears, but Redmond pulled ahead for the remainder of the first quarter. Prinos Grumbach and Stevenson went jab for jab in the first quarter, with the Mustangs guard scoring 10 of Redmond’s 14 first-quarter points and Stevenson scoring eight of Olympia’s 10.
Redmond maintained its lead throughout the first half, leading by as many as eight on a last-minute triple by Prinos Grumbach before Elijah Buol answered with a 3-pointer to close out the first half with Olympia down 29-24. Stevenson was responsible for 12 of Olympia’s 24 points in the first half.
After the Mustangs tacked on the first two points of the second half, the Bears found a spark with a 13-2 run. The catalyst was a Keegan Bell two-handed dunk in transition that had the Bears student section and bench out of their seats. During that spurt, a Buol layup with just under five minutes left in the third gave Oly its first lead since it was 4-3 just over two minutes into the first quarter.
Bell knocked down a key 3-pointer to push the Bears in front by four, their biggest lead of the night. But Redmond’s cold spell quickly turned into a hot streak over the final four minutes, as the Mustangs sprinted to an 11-2 run to finish the fourth up four.
Buol and Cronk took the steering wheel to start the fourth quarter, each drilling a trifecta to put Olympia back in front by one. Redmond’s Cooper Kunz and Matthew Grabarski scored a pair of layups, and the Bears took the lead right back with two free throws by Buol and a go-ahead layup by Kingston Stanciu with 2:07 left in the fourth.
The final point scored in regulation came on a Lane Asobo free throw for Redmond to tie the game at 49 with 1:34 left, but the lull in scoring didn’t translate to a lull in action as both teams scrapped for their postseason lives.
Bell missed an open triple from the left wing, and Redmond took a timeout off the rebound. Prinos Grumbach fired a 3-pointer out of the timeout but missed, and Olympia took a timeout to set up a play with 41.4 seconds left. Cronk drove inside but was blocked on a go-ahead layup attempt inside the final 25 seconds.
With the shot clock turned off and the Mustangs looking for the winning shot, Prinos Grumbach drained the clock to under 10 seconds before he drove hard to the basket along the baseline from the left side, leaping and making a layup, the whistle blowing as he and Cronk hit the deck with half a second left. But as Redmond’s crowd roared, the official signaled an offensive foul amid the chaos, a charge on Prinos Grumbach drawn by Cronk. It was the Olympia crowd’s turn to go crazy as the Bears escaped the fourth quarter and forced overtime by outscoring the Mustangs 10-5 in the fourth.
“It could have gone either way, and it went our way that time,” Kiley said of the final play of regulation.
In overtime, Redmond scored the first two points on a trip to the charity stripe for Kunz, and Olympia knotted the score back up on a Stevenson layup with 3:02 left. But over the final 3:02, the Bears’ offense fell apart. Prinos Grumbach hit a go-ahead triple, and Olympia fouled on an offensive rebound attempt.
After two missed free throws by Redmond, Olympia turned the ball over, and Kunz delivered the dagger with an and-one layup to give the Mustangs a six-point advantage with 1:13 to go. Olympia couldn’t get a shot to fall as Redmond finished off a nine-point victory with a 9-0 run.
“They scored a couple points early and got the momentum. We turned it over a couple times disappointingly, missed a couple shots and didn’t get to the free-throw line,” Kiley said of the overtime period. “I think we could have done a better job of getting to the rim.”
Stevenson led the Bears with 16 points Friday night, and Buol added a dozen. Bell scored seven, Cronk and Stanciu tallied five apiece, and Elijah Lewis tacked on four.
Olympia finishes its season with a 16-8 record. Kiley will most remember the fight it took for the Bears to rally from an early loss in the district tournament and win three straight to get to state.
“We were up 13 at Skyview, and they tied the game with about three minutes to go and we found a way to win,” Kiley said. “We were down nine in the third quarter to Kentridge and found a way to win. If you don’t stick together through those hard times, there’s no way in heck you’re going to find a way to triumph in those situations. They leaned on the relationships they built, the trust and the friendships that allow you to push one another sometimes.”
Olympia graduates three seniors who all started games for the Bears: Cronk, Stanciu and Bell. Buol, the South Puget Sound League South co-MVP, and Stevenson, a first team all-SPSL South selection, will return for the Bears in 2026-27.
“They brought love and unconditional buy-in. These guys just pushed and pulled. I could push them as hard as I possibly could, and they pulled their other teammates,” Kiley said of the seniors. “They don’t want to take their jerseys off. As a coach, if I can get my seniors to not want to take their jerseys off every year, we’ve done OK.”
