Nerves fluttered for Bend High during the first five minutes. Yet frustration never set in.

The Lava Bears missed their first seven shots, but they never wavered. They trailed by eight points, but all Bend needed was for one shot to fall. Once the Bears got it, the floodgates opened.

Justin Kerr and Brian Warinner led a Bend revitalization late in the first quarter, creating momentum for a Lava Bears surge over the next two periods and sending the Bears to a dominant 65-42 boys basketball win Wednesday night over visiting St. Helens in the Class 5A boys basketball play-in round.

“We were nervous. You could tell,” said Bend coach Scott Baker. “We haven’t won a play-in game the last two years, and we had a couple of guys (Warinner and Jimmy Robertson) who have been (in those play-in games) both years. They were a little nervous, and I told them it was OK to be nervous. But you just have to focus on the little things. As soon as we hit that first shot, they just relaxed and just played. And then we remembered it would be our defense that would take care of things.”

With the win, the Lava Bears advance to the first round of the 5A state playoffs. Seeded No. 9 in the 16-team field, Bend will travel to Eugene on Saturday to take on No. 8 Churchill.

St. Helens, the fifth-place team from the Northwest Oregon Conference, hit the Bend High gym floor running, as the Lions (11-14 overall) built an 8-0 lead. The Lava Bears were held scoreless until Warinner buried a 3-pointer with just over three minutes left in the period, trimming Bend’s early deficit to five points and sparking a flurry.

Bend, which beat St. Helens 61-44 at home on Dec. 8, missed only four of its next 13 attempts, while St. Helens made just 3 of 12 shots and committed nine turnovers after hitting its first two jumpers. Over that time, the Lava Bears outscored the Lions 25-7 to build a 25-15 advantage.

“We just couldn’t hit our shots. But we knew it would come,” said Kerr, who scored eight of his 20 points in the second quarter. “We just kept on doing what we were doing, and they started falling.

“We usually come into these games a little bit nervous. Sometimes we have a slow start, but once we get in a rhythm, we work really well together.”

Kerr added another eight points in the third quarter, during which Bend extended its lead to 52-32, and Warinner supplied the exclamation point in the fourth period with a two-handed dunk that put the Lava Bears up 61-36 and sent the home student section into a frenzy.

Kerr accounted for four of Bend’s eight 3-pointers to lead the Bears to their first state playoff appearance since 2014. Warinner chipped in with 18 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists and two blocks, and Robertson added 10 points and three assists for Bend, which, despite its slow start, shot 46.3 percent from the field.

“Once we get open shots and are working together as a team,” Kerr said, “it’s hard to stop us.”

Joe Rea had 14 points and Jacob Falk scored 12 for St. Helens, which shot a mere 29.3 percent from the floor, including a 5-for-18 clip from 3-point range.

“It’s good for the kids’ confidence,” Baker said of the Lava Bears moving into the state playoffs. “It’s good for them believing in themselves that we can go play and that we’re going to be one of the better teams in the state. As much as we coaches like to tell the kids that, I think now they’re starting to see it and realize it.”

“It makes us pretty confident,” Kerr added. “But we need to go in the same way and play our hardest and do what we do and not do anything else.”

— Reporter: 541-383-0307, glucas@bendbulletin.com