No denying Inchelium
Inchelium girls basketball coach Rob Seymour still hasn’t watched the game tape.
His junior post, Steven Carson, said the players thought about it every day.
They were 6½ minutes away from the school’s first trip to the State B tournament since 1979 last year, but blew a 19-point fourth-quarter lead to Sprague-Harrington in a winner-to-state, loser-out game.
This year’s edition of the Hornets found themselves in the same position Saturday – and finished.
Inchelium (23-5) outscored Liberty by 22 points in the second half to eliminate the Lancers 52-28 at Mt. Spokane, grabbing the third District 7 berth to state.
“Last year was pretty hard, I mean, we lost out,” Carson said. “We always think about the Sprague-Harrington game, we reflect on it all the time. But this is awesome. We finally came out in the fourth quarter and pulled it together.”
The fourth quarter was set up by an outstanding third quarter, when Chelsi Pakootas scored Inchelium’s first seven points of the half on the way to an 18-3 advantage in the quarter. That broke open a two-point Hornets lead at halftime.
They maintained their defense into the fourth, holding Liberty (20-6) to 10 second-half points and 9-of-52 shooting (17.3 percent) in the game, forcing 26 turnovers.
“I challenged our girls at halftime, we were playing their game,” said Seymour, who assisted the Hornets last season. “I told them to get after it, play some hard-nosed defense and get up and down the court, that’s our type of game.”
Pakootas led Inchelium with 15 points and five assists and Amanda Burch added 10 points. Carson pulled down 10 rebounds to help the Hornets compete on the glass against the taller Lancers, who outrebounded Inchelium 47-31.
“We’re not very big, but we’ve got big hearts,” Seymour said. “Our defense has come a long way to this year from last year. Our team just gets after it and we don’t stop.”
In the girls district championship, Sprague-Harrington put together another sparkling defensive effort to put away Curlew 57-37.
Top-ranked S-H (26-0) held the seventh-ranked Cougars to 30 percent shooting and held its opponent to less than 40 points for the eighth time in nine games.
Stacie Shields, Natalie Deking and Roni Jo Mielke combined for 46 points, as S-H avenged a loss to Curlew in the state third-place game last year.
Nichole Miller had 11 points and 13 rebounds, and Amanda Grumbach scored 10 and had seven boards for the Cougars (22-3).
Boys
It took a detour through three loser-out games, but second-ranked Republic earned a trip to its third consecutive state tournament by handling Lind-Ritzville 73-57 in a winner-to-state, loser-out game, also at Mt. Spokane.
Derek and Zach Gianukakis came out hot, combining for 34 first-half points as the Tigers (23-3) shot 53 percent from the field and didn’t turn the ball over while racing to a 42-19 halftime lead.
Zach finished the game with 31 points and eight rebounds and Derek was 10 of 15 from the field for 29 points and 11 boards.
In the first half, Republic held L-R (17-10) to 34.8 percent shooting and forced nine turnovers.
Republic also hit its first 18 free throws before missing the last one.
“We’ve got good athletes and we’ve got good role players. I expect these guys to play at that level,” Tigers head coach John Gianukakis said. “(Zach and Derek) play well as brothers and look for each other a lot and inside, right now, they’re a tough matchup for anybody.”
Cameron Stevenson scored 25 for the Broncos, 21 in the second half after picking up three first-half fouls.
Northwest Christian cruised in the boys district championship, scoring 15 of the game’s first 18 points on the way to a 67-40 win over Wilbur-Creston (15-12).
Seventh-ranked NWC (23-3) shot 31 of 54 (57.4 percent) from the field, led by 16 points from Joe Grewe and 13 points and eight rebounds from Karl Richardson.
It’s NWC’s second district championship in as many years, and last year, that championship prefaced a third-place finish at the state tournament.