St. George’s Lost In Morton Forest

Day session

It sure was strange watching the St. George’s Dragons play basketball in the daylight hours.

If they didn’t have to go to school during the day, it would be perfectly fine to assume that this is a group made for big games in the post meridian.

For the past three seasons, when the tournament pairings for girls State B high school basketball competition had been set, everyone looked to see the route the Dragons and Davenport Gorillas had to take before they met each other in the championship.

Those days are gone.

And so are the Dragons, thanks to the Morton Huskies, who used an overwhelming size advantage to counter the speedy Dragons in a 68-65 win at Spokane Falls in Friday’s loser-out competition.

Morton (21-9) advances to play St. John-Endicott today at 1:30 p.m. for fourth place. The Eagles beat Rainier 65-50 behind the duo of Tricia Lamb and Andee Schmick.

Wilbur-Creston (25-5) mauled Bridgeport-Mansfield (18-8) 61-32, and Mossyrock (23-4) defeated Klickitat (26- 3) 56-47.

Wilbur-Creston and Mossyrock will play for fifth place today at noon.

The Dragons’ (25-4) speed couldn’t overcome Morton’s size, and the Huskies outrebounded the defending champions 53-32.

“That was hard to overcome,” Dragons coach Ross Thomas said. “We just kept coming and coming, but they just banged us out of the way.”

St. George’s didn’t shed many tears this time, mainly because there weren’t many left over from Thursday night’s overtime loss to Tekoa-Oakesdale.

“We didn’t want to quit,” St. George’s Chrissy Peterson said. “Everybody played so hard - it was great.”

Peterson led all scorers with 31 points.

For Morton coach Jay Henderson, a Spokane native, the victory was especially sweet.

“We lost four key seniors from last year’s team that placed,” Henderson said. “It took us a while to get it going this season.”

Morton was led by Sami Schinnell and Sarah Coleman, with 22 and 21 points, respectively. Coleman also added a game-high 17 rebounds.

The following fields overflowed: KEYWORD = PREP BASKETBALL STATE B TOURNAMENT