Enos gives Kamehameha a huge lift

Demolition Dyrbe knocked another ILH team out of commission on Tuesday night.

Dyrbe Enos scored 25 points and No. 4 Kamehameha beat Maryknoll 57-52 in an Interscholastic League of Honolulu third-place tournament semifinal at Kamehameha, ending Maryknoll’s season. The Warriors (19-8, 9-5 ILH) move on to play at ‘Iolani on Friday for the league’s final state berth.

Enos came out firing in the elimination game, ignoring Maryknoll’s box-and-1 defense for four 3-pointers in the first quarter, two of them before the Spartans could get on the board.

Taylor Taliulu began the game with a long 3-pointer, one of his three bombs in the contest, and Enos followed with two more to give Kamehameha a 9-0 lead 2 minutes and 44 seconds into the contest. He stepped back and made another one with 2:52 left to squash a Maryknoll revolt, and squared up and hit his fourth from the top of the key to run the margin to 12 with 1:48 left in the first quarter. He would not hit another 3 the rest of the way, but he didn’t need to.

“Dyrbe knows he has to take his game to the next level now,” Kamehameha coach Julian Nakanishi said. “That’s taking it to the next level right there, he came through.”

Enos started slashing to the hoop after his barrage, scoring only four points in the middle quarters but adding nine in the final 8 minutes when the Spartans refused to quit. Maryknoll trailed the entire game but cut the deficit to one on a 3-pointer by Joshua Burnett and a pair of free throws by Danny Danbara with 3:30 left, but Enos and his Kamehameha mates never let them take the lead.

Enos left Tobias Powell behind on a crossover and hit a pair of free throws, and Noah Borden put back a missed free throw by Makoa Camanse-Stevens to put Kamehameha up five with 2 minutes left. The Warriors hit eight of 11 free throws the rest of the way to seal it.

“Dyrbe was on fire,” Maryknoll coach Kelly Grant said. “He was shooting full-on pullback jumpshots from 22 feet. It’s hard to defend those kinds of shots. If he is going to shoot those, I’ll take that any day. That’s NBA stuff, that’s how good he is.”

Kamehameha only got to the line 18 times in the game, hitting 10 of them. Maryknoll pounded the ball inside to go 20-for-31 and hit 18 free throws before the Warriors sank their first one.

Joshua Burnett led Maryknoll with 17 points and Kaleb Gilmore and Tobias Schramm added seven. Schramm corralled 13 rebounds and Austin Gaskins had five despite not playing in the first half because he missed practice. The No. 8 Spartans, who were ranked as high as third in the Star-Advertiser poll in December, finish their season 19-9, 7-7 in the ILH, but have something to build on.

“The Maryknoll team, they don’t quit and they have a bright future ahead of them,” Nakanishi said.