KAKAAKO — A new champion will be crowned Wednesday night. 

No. 7 Mililani just got by fourth-ranked Leilehua, while No. 6 Kailua fended off unranked Moanalua in the semifinals of the Oahu Interscholastic Association Division I boys basketball tournament on Monday night. 

The doubleheader at McKinley's Student Council Gymnasium saw the Trojans (11-2) barely edge the defending champion Mules (11-1) by the slimmest of margins, 61-60, in the late semifinal. The matinee matchup saw the Surfriders (12-0) remain undefeated with a 67-56 victory over Na Menehune (9-4).

The latest iteration of the Mililani-Leilehua rivalry proved to be another epic clash as the game featured 28 lead changes and 10 ties. 

The final lead change came with 7.9 seconds left, when Taye Marxen banked in a pair of free throws around a Mules' timeout to put the Trojans ahead for good. 

"When I got to the line I did it for my team and when (Leilehua) called timeout after that first one, everyone told me I had it and I was going to make it, so I just believed in them like I always do and thank the Lord I hit it," said Marxen, a junior post. 

Marxen acknowledged that it wasn't necessarily entirely by design that he used the glass on his pair of free throws that proved to be the difference. 

"A little bit, not really," he chuckled. "I shot a little strong, but it's OK; it went in."

Mililani coach Garrett Gabriel noted that Marxen has replicated the feat in practices before. 

"What's funny about it — and people laugh — but he actually does that in practice, too. So I wasn't shocked, but it's not normal. But I told him the bottom line is make it and he found a way to do it and against Leilehua every game is decided by one to three points, it seems like, so those are our rivals and they bring out the best in us and that team is very talented, so (we're) very lucky to be in the situation, but we also want to represent the West the way we should," Gabriel stated. 

After the Trojans pulled ahead, they had three fouls to give in the closing seconds, which they used to take the clock down to 3.8 seconds for the Mules' final possession. 

Zachery Ranos inbounded the ball from the right sideline to Cobe Wyatt about eight feet beyond the 3-point line. Wyatt drove to his right, took two dribbles and put up a right-handed shot with three Mililani defenders closing in on him. Wyatt's shot banked off the backboard and bounced off the front iron. Tyree Wilson was able to tip the rebound with his right hand, but it rimmed out as the final buzzer went off. 

"We went to a zone to try and throw them off, try and keep things in front of us, but they still got some penetration and had a tip at it, so we're lucky, but sometimes you need luck along the way," Gabriel said. 

Leilehua coach Chad Townsend called timeout after seeing Mililani was in a zone defense; He credited the Trojans for getting the stop in the end. 

"We drew up that play, but they did a good job taking away our initial look, but Cobe was our second look to get that ball and drive the gap on that zone," Townsend said. 

Neither team led by more than five points at any point. The Trojans held a 52-47 advantage after Tui Tukimaka hit a 3-pointer from the left corner with 6:54 left to play. However, the Mules answered with a 6-0 run that included a pair of buckets by Wilson to inch ahead, 53-52. 

Wyatt spun away from a defender and hit a tough shot to tie it at 59 with 1:01 remaining. Ranos came up with a steal and drew a foul to get to the line, where he hit the front end of two free throws. That gave his team a one-point lead with 41.1 seconds on the clock. 

On Mililani's ensuing possession, Marxen drew contact on the other end of the floor. He was deemed to be in the act of shooting, which sent him to the charity stripe. 

Townsend declined to comment on his perspective on the foul call that went against his team. 

"I didn't see it and I'm not a ref, so no comment. I'm not gonna comment on that. I couldn't see from my end," Townsend said. 

"Refs do their job, it's not an easy job, so yeah, I'm a little bit irritated by it, but like I said, I gotta see the film. They might have saw things that I didn't see over here," he added. 

Roman Gabriel, the son of the coach, scored 17 of his game-high 23 points in the first half. The senior forward finished 9-of-14 shooting from the field and also grabbed a team-high six rebounds. 

Tukimaka went 3 of 5 from beyond the arc and tallied 15 points, while LeCedric Brown chalked up 11 of his 13 points after the break despite dealing with foul trouble. 

"He played big," Garrett Gabriel said of Brown, a senior forward. "I got into him at halftime. It wasn't his best first half, but that's what seniors do. I challenged him: ‘Hey, you gotta be a difference maker, otherwise we have no chance,' but he stepped up and he's been doing his whole career, so very proud of him. Hell of a player."

Brown committed four of Mililani's five turnovers in the first half and had just two points at the intermission. He said that Gabriel urged him to "play strong" through the final two quarters. 

"I knew I had to get to the basket, play my game and calm down a little bit. I knew I had to step up a lot because we were down. We needed big shots, we needed people to step up and I knew I had to do my part," Brown said. 

Brown had two fouls in the first half and picked up two more in the first four minutes and 15 seconds of the third quarter. Despite that, he stepped in the way of a driving Trystin Stevens early in the fourth quarter and drew a charge call. 

"I just trusted my gut, stepped in front of him and got it," Brown stated. 

Point guard Ezekiel Virtudes recorded seven assists with no turnovers for Mililani, which shot 24 of 46 (52.2 percent) from the field and 6 of 12 from distance. 

Leilehua converted on 25 of 48 field goals (52.1 percent), but was 2 of 10 on 3-pointers. 

Wilson led the way with a double-double of 20 points and 10 rebounds. Chaysen Montayre scored 12 of his 16 points in the first half and Wyatt finished with 13 points in the loss. 

The game was a rematch of last year's OIA championship game, which the Mules won by a score of 52-50. More recently, they also held off the Trojans, 51-50, when the teams met in the regular season opener back on Dec. 23. 

"It was back and forth so much, so whoever executed in that last quarter, got all the loose balls, did every little thing would come out on top and they came out on top by one. Tough game," Townsend said. 

Mililani made all three of its 3-point attempts in the final eight minutes. Tukimaka made two of them, while Brown accounted for the other. 

Tukimaka, Gabriel and Virtudes played all 32 minutes, while Brown logged 31. 

"Just came down to executing down the stretch. We made some mistakes here and there, but I thought the guys — some guys had to play the whole game and I thought they did a good job of still controlling the tempo. Every time we got a run, they came back. They got a run, we came back and we just held them one last play, but I think the key was just finding ways to get through," Garrett Gabriel said. 

Gabriel reflected upon the fact that his team will be playing in its fourth consecutive OIA championship game.

"This team has been very resilient. I told them to even be in OIA championships, you know, it takes some luck, but it also takes some skill and I think these guys, they learned to fight. It's our fourth in a row, which is really tough to do, I told them that, so I'm really proud of them for that," Gabriel expressed. 

The Trojans finished third in the Western Division. Their path to the OIA final began with an 85-64 win over East sixth seed Kaimuki and continued with a 57-47 road win over East runner-up Kahuku. They handed the Mules their first loss of the year and will face another unbeaten in East top seed Kailua Wednesday night. 

The Surfriders never trailed in their semifinal against East third seed Moanalua. 

Maddox Pung scored 22 of his career-high 30 points in the second half, while Skyler Unten and Sebastian Ledda chipped in 10 points apiece in the win. 

Pung, a junior guard, shot 13 of 21 from the field. All but four of his shot attempts came from inside the arc. 

"Maddox is our coach on the court and when things are starting to fall apart, he'll gather everybody and get them together and we'll save timeouts because he's our coach," Kailua coach Wally Marciel said of the three-year starter. 

Pung helped the Surfriders finish with advantages in points in the paint (38 to 29), second-chance points (20 to 7) and points off turnovers (18 to 4). 

"He saw the mismatches tonight and he knew he could work it inside and instead of shooting 3s from the outside, he goes inside and hits those shots," Marciel added of Pung, who scored 14 points in the third quarter alone. 

Pung scored on three straight possessions early in the third quarter that was part of an 8-0 Kailua run that gave his team a 42-26 cushion. However, Moanalua answered with a 10-0 run that included back-to-back 3-pointers by Brent Campbell and Nichika Tsang to cut it to a six-point game. 

The Surfriders retaliated and closed out the third quarter with a 10-2 run that was punctuated by a Pung three-point play after he finished drove for a layup and was fouled in the process. Pung hit the ensuing free throw to extend his team's lead back to 54-40 with one second left in the stanza. 

"Oh, that was big," Marciel said of the sequence. "That was big for us. We wanted a good size lead going into the fourth quarter."

Pung pointed out that getting stops on the defensive end was key toward the momentum-turning run. 

"Momentum is always good. We like to stop runs; They're always gonna make a run if it's a good team, so we gotta stop the run, but it was great for our momentum and it was a great win," Pung said. 

Kailua led by as many as 18 points on Pung's floater in the lane that stretched the score to 61-43 with 4:49 left to play. 

Unten scored eight points in the second quarter and finished with eight rebounds, three assists, three steals and one block. Dylan Kunz contributed six points, six rebounds, three assist and three steals in 16 minutes off the bench. 

The Surfriders racked up 16 offensive rebounds, which led to a 20-7 edge in second-chance points. They also forced Moanalua into 16 turnovers, which Marciel's squad parlayed into an 18-4 advantage in points off turnovers. 

Freshman Chazen Dabalos-Vereze shot 7 of 10 from the field and scored 14 of his team-high 18 points in the second half to pace Na Menehune. Tramir Ladipo added 15 points and five rebounds in the loss. 

Kailua will be playing in its first league final since 2022, when it lost to Mililani by a score of 43-26. It exorcised the demons of a double-overtime defeat at the hands of Leilehua in the semifinal round of the OIA tournament a year ago. 

"It feels great; I've never been to an OIA championship. We lost a heartbreaker in double-overtime last year, so this was a hard-fought win against a great Moanalua team, but I think we're good and we're peaking at the right time," Pung said. 

It was the second meeting between the teams this season. Moanalua recorded a 54-48 win over Kailua back on Dec. 30. 

Na Menehune saw their seven-game win streak come to an end. They will play Leilehua at Paul T. Kobayashi Gymnasium Wednesday at 6 p.m. in the third-place game. 

Tip-off between the Surfriders and Trojans is scheduled for approximately 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at McKinley and will follow the D2 final between Aiea (7-4) and Kaiser (8-3) at 5:30 p.m.