Kent Grams tried to make the message stick, practice after practice, for months. He had a lanky 6-foot-5 junior guard, after all, with a blink-and-you ‘ll-miss-it step-back jumper and feathery touch from the foul line. Rock Canyon needed Jacob David to be their guy, Grams would tell him.
Sometimes it took. Sometimes it wouldn’t. David defers “way too much at times,” as Grams reflected, even in a season where the Jaguars guard is averaging 19 points per game. But there was nobody Grams — or Rock Canyon’s locker room — wanted more to go to work with a game in the balance.
“He was just telling me that I needed to be the one with the ball in my hands when it mattered,” David said. “And I mean, thatap what happened in this game.”
Indeed, Rock Canyon’s season came down Saturday night to David’s understanding of those very words. And he assumed control late in a 15-point effort against Ralston Valley, sealing a 68-58 win and an improbable run for No. 5 Rock Canyon to a boys 6A state championship at the Denver Coliseum.
With less than three minutes left, an early 14-point lead for the Jaguars had completely evaporated. Ralston Valley senior Zeke Andrews was getting anything he wanted around the rim, with a fourth-quarter putback jam giving him 18 points. A well-traveled crowd of Canyonites was being deafened by raucous Mustang students in white and blue. So clinging to a one-point advantage, David introduced the Mustangs to his dance.
He’d rarely found any airspace on this night. So he created his own. A quick stutter-step sent his defender on his heels and David behind the line, rearing up with the ball in his hands — just the place Grams wanted it.
David flicked, a 3-pointer swished, and the junior stretched his vocal cords to the cavernous audience at the Coliseum with an early dagger.
Tenacious defense and timely free-throw shooting from David and junior Cooper Ellwood sealed the title for Rock Canyon, as star big Kai Valentine tackled junior Jonah Medina after the buzzer and threw a few gleeful fake punches at his chest. After they raised the 6A trophy at center court, the entire Jaguars roster raced over to the Jags home section at the Coliseum for an impromptu mosh-pit.
It was a visual of just how far this program had come. After jumping up to 6A/5A in the 2022-23 season, Rock Canyon made three straight Sweet 16s without hitting paydirt. In 14 years as the Jaguars’ head coach, too, Knaus had never managed to win a title.
Until Saturday.
“Every year is a grind, and every year you think you might have a chance,” Knaus said postgame, slightly red-faced. “This year at the beginning of the year — I thought we had a special group. I knew we had a lot of maturing to do, and a lot of growing up. And they bought into what I said. They bought into each other.”
David walked away from a sea of hand-slaps in the crowd, slightly dazed, with a slight grin.
“We owe ‘em one,” David said, referring to the raucous Rock Canyon crowd. “We got ‘em one.”
Rock Canyon knocked off No. 1-seeded Chaparral 75-60 in the semifinals to get here, and put No. 2-seeded Ralston Valley away Saturday night behind David, who scored 11 of his 15 points in the second half. Jaguars senior Valentine operated from the mid-post like a certain Joker who plays a few miles down the road, stacking dimes on silver platters and scoring 13 points around the rim. And Ellwood was the Jaguars’ most important piece end-to-end, repeatedly slashing to the rim with a team-leading 19 points and assuming the unenviable task of checking Ralston Valley’s top scorer Caiden Braketa.
Grams had gone to both Ellwood and junior Avery Vasquez and asked them about guarding Braketa. Both said they wanted him. Grams went with Ellwood.
“We weren’t letting him catch the ball, and I did my best,” Ellwood said. “I mean, he still got his buckets. He’s an unreal player. But in my head, it was just – ‘Do not let him catch the ball. Do not let him score.’”
He, Vasquez and Jack Christensen all flitted in Braketa’s ears and went chest-to-chest with him in the first half, slowing a high-volume scorer who came in averaging 19.5 points per game. Braketa finished with 16 points, but was held to just four before the halftime break, his jumper falling in and out of rhythm.
After Rock Canyon built a 30-21 halftime lead, the Mustangs stormed back in the second half. Midway through the third quarter, Ralston Valley pushed the ball in transition with the Jaguars falling slightly out of control.
“Settle down!” Grams roared, ringing across the hardwood.
Not a second later, Mustangs senior Frank Psaute pulled from deep, nailed a triple, and nodded at David as the Mustangs cut Rock Canyon’s lead to five.
Psaute’s shooting often kept Ralston Valley within striking distance throughout the night, with five three-pointers. David, though, got him back with a double-clutch triple over Psaute’s hands at the third-quarter buzzer. And the Rock Canyon junior hit the biggest shot of the night when it counted, propelling his program to history.
Afterwards, in the Coliseum tunnel, a beaming Ellwood was handed a phone with Principal Andy Abner on the other end. The speaker crackled. Ellwood yelled back.
“He said,” Ellwood recounted, “‘It’s a great day to be a Jaguar.’”
