Fillies Let Favored Gorillas Off Hook
Day session
For 26 minutes Wednesday morning, the Bridgeport-Mansfield girls successfully played the role of spoilers in Round One of the girls State B high school basketball tournament at Spokane Falls Community College.
Enter Davenport wing/forward Jennifer Stinson. Better make that ‘exit’.
In an unlikely twist, the Gorillas rallied behind the loss of their leading scorer to beat the Fillies 69-64 after trailing by as many as 11 points in the second half.
Stinson scored 21 points in 3 1/2 periods, becoming the tournament’s alltime leading girls scorer, but fouled out with 5:22 remaining.
“When Stinson went out, we thought we had it in the bag,” Fillies coach Mel Wells said. “We came down and got complacent. We looked to run a play instead of coming right at them.”
The Gorillas responded by turning to freshman wing Christie Emery.
Emery scored six points after Stinson left, including a bucket with 47 seconds remaining that gave Davenport a 65-61 lead.
Davenport coach Jim Stinson said he was pleased with his team’s response to his daughter’s exit.
“Our key is we picked up our shooting in the first half,” Jim Stinson said. “We weren’t taking the good shots that we needed to take and we seemed to be really razzled the first half offensively, and that led us to a lethargic defensive effort. We just finally picked it up, and I was very proud of everybody’s effort.”
Jennifer Stinson was equally appreciative of her teammates.
“I definitely didn’t have anything to do with the win - it was all them (teammates),” she said. “I give them all the credit.”
Davenport’s victory overshadowed a strong performance by the unheralded Fillies, who were paced by sophomore center Shelbie Preugschat.
Preugschat, Bridgeport-Mansfield’s tallest player at 5-foot-10, scored 22 points and drew the tough defensive assignment of guarding Stinson.
“We wanted to work it inside, where we could get fouls on Stinson and then shoot outside,” Preugschat said.
“We thought we had it, but the game wasn’t over. I don’t know what happened. We just thought we were going to win and got carried away at the end.”
Bridgeport-Mansfield shot 25 of 71 from the field, and despite their smallish stature grabbed 39 rebounds. Davenport converted 16 of 32 field goal attempts and had 44 boards.
Wells said his team executed perfectly until the game’s final stages.
“We like to run and we pushed the ball up the floor pretty good,” Wells said. “I don’t have one or two kids that can shoot the ball - I’ve got about seven. The thing about that is you always shoot the ball if you’re open. I don’t care if you’re a freshman or senior.”
Davenport will meet Rainier today at noon for a chance to advance to the tournament semifinals. Bridgeport-Mansfield will play Wilbur-Creston in a loser-out game at 9 a.m.