DUFUR — A district title in 2024, a district runner-up finish this season, and an appearance in the Class 1A boys basketball state tournament for the first time since 2004. Those were some of the highlights of the careers of nine Ranger senior players.
The Rangers’ 2024-25 season ended March 7 in the consolation round of the final-eight state tourney in Baker City. Coach Hollie Darden’s Dufur team was eliminated by a familiar foe — Big Sky Conference rival Sherman County — in a breakfast bracket game at Baker High School.
Sherman County beat the Rangers, 64-50, which ended Dufur’s season with a 22-8 record. Sherman had defeated Dufur once during the regular season and then for the district championship.
The Huskies jumped out to a 10-1 lead on the Rangers and were ahead 32-16 at halftime.
Dufur was led in scoring by Klayton Schanno’s 16 points and Bryson Cates’ 11. Cates scored all of his points in the second half and helped the Rangers erase half of a 12-point deficit. Sherman led 51-39 with five minutes to play when Cates made a 3-pointer. The teams traded baskets and then Schanno scored and his bucket was followed by another Cates trey – off an assist from Jacob Brown - and it was 53-47 with 1:46 remaining.
That’s as close as Dufur would get as Shermann converted on 11 of 17 free throws in the game’s final 90 seconds.
In their first tourney game, the No. 8 seed Rangers drew top seed Mannahouse Academy of Portland in the quarterfinals. (Mannahouse had beaten Dufur, 71-21, on Dec. 23 in a regular season contest.) Dufur struggled with Mannahouse’s size in the rematch and lost 64-28 to the eventual state runner-up (Crane High won its fourth successive state crown). The Rangers fell behind 34-16 at halftime in part because of 12 first-half turnovers. Jacob Kent led Dufur in scoring with seven points.
Dufur qualified for the state tourney with a second-round playoff win March 1 over visiting Union (21-7), 54-50. The Rangers were led in scoring by Kent’s 18 points and Jacob Brown added 13.
Six Dufur seniors were on varsity for their final three seasons: Adrian Chavez, Jacob Brown, Klayton Schanno, Jacob Kent, Kordell White, and Foster Harvey. Three other seniors also played their final games for the Rangers at state: Nolan Cates; Michael Seitz, and Hunter Woods.
Under Darden, Dufur was 53-21 the past three seasons and 36-6 in the Big Sky Conference.
Commented
Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles.