By Don Ketchum

At no time has it been more beneficial to have a 6-foot-9 player with long arms than it was for the boys’ basketball team from Glendale Raymond S. Kellis on Wednesday night (Feb. 22).

The big man was senior Kenny Martin, and he came through in a big way in a Division II quarterfinal game at Arizona State’s Wells Fargo Arena.

With Herb Sendek, Martin’s coach at ASU next season, watching from press row, Martin scored on a jam with 2:42 left in overtime and then hit two free throws with 30.3 seconds left to give the Cougars a 52-51 victory over Phoenix Paradise Valley.

Martin set up his free throws by reaching high to grab a rebound of a teammate’s missed free throw, put the ball back up and was fouled.

He calmly dropped both foul shots through the net.

“I never had to do something big like that at the end of the game. I was kind of nervous,’’ said Martin, who finished with 20 points.

A nervous situation, indeed.

“In games like this that come down to the last minute, you’ve just got to keep playing,’’ Martin said.

The second-seeded Cougars (26-2) won’t have a lot of time to let the victory sink in. They will play a semifinal game on Thursday at 4:15 p.m. against third-seeded Tucson Amphitheater at Grand Canyon University Arena in Phoenix.

Will Kellis be too emotionally drained from Wednesday night’s effort, or will the momentum carry over?

“I don’t know. We will find out tomorrow (Thursday),’’ said Kellis coach Curtis Green.

The game was a defensive battle, the coach said.

“When your teams score in the low 50s and its overtime, that’s pretty good defense,’’ he said.

He said the 1-3-1 zone defense employed by seventh-seeded Paradise Valley (24-6) “was very effective. It forced us to do some things we don’t normally do. It slowed things down. But we played good defense, too.’’

Kellis built a 42-35 lead with 6:19 left in regulation, but 6-6 junior Paul Watson  led the way by hitting four free throws during an 8-2 run that cut the deficit to 44-43 with 3:38 left. He led his team with 18 points, one of his better all-around efforts of the season.

Kellis’ Demetrius Balark made a free throw at the two-minute mark and another foul shot with 1:13 left to make it 46-43, but the Trojans’ Ryan Finley drained a 3-pointer with 53 seconds left to set up the extra period.

Paradise Valley’s Anthony Walker hit two free throws to begin the overtime and hit another foul shot with 1:45 left for a 51-50 lead. PV missed two free throws with 44.9 seconds left and Kellis missed two with 33 seconds left, with Martin grabbing the rebound on the second one.

Trojans coach Mark MacGowan called a timeout with 20.7 seconds left, but his team threw the ball away with a pass along the baseline with a little more than one second to play.