Freeman girls stop No. 1 Colfax
The Freeman girls packed in their defense Saturday night and are ready to make a trip to Brewster next week, defeating No. 1-ranked Colfax for the first time this year, 55-44 in the District 7 1A basketball championship at Mead High.
All was not lost in Colfax, however, as its boys rallied in the second half to down Kettle Falls 60-45, also earning a winner-to-state game at Brewster against the Caribou Trail League’s No. 3 seed.
The district runners-up will be back in action Tuesday night at Mt. Spokane (boys 6, girls 7:30) against Saturday’s loser-out game survivors. Freeman’s boys topped Newport 42-39, before Newport’s girls ended Kettle Falls’ season, 50-38.
The winners of Tuesday night’s games will face the Caribou Trail’s No. 2 seeds, with a berth in the State 1A Tournament in Yakima at stake.
When the NEA regular-season title was at stake, the Colfax girls had stopped Freeman twice. So Scotties coach Matt Gregg decided to do something different.
“We told the girls during the walk-through today to pack it in,” Gregg said. “If they were going to beat us, they would have to do it from the outside. Then we had to rebound. We had our best rebounding game of the year, and we followed the game plan better than we have all year.”
The Scotties (18-3) won the rebounding battle 35-25, paced by the seven of sophomore guard Kelsey Raines.
Raines also had a game-high 16 points, converting all 10 of her second-half free throws.
The Bulldogs (18-4) shot 25 percent in the decisive first three quarters.
“This was definitely our best rebounding game of the year,” said Freeman senior guard Jessie DePell, who scored 13 on a night it was announced she shared NEA Most Valuable Player honors with Colfax’s Jordan Harazin. “We played with more intensity because we knew if we were going to beat them, we needed to do it tonight.
“And our bench really came through.”
Colfax’s boys got some big contributions from the bench, but it was a starter who exceeded even his coach’s expectations.
That would be 6-foot-4 senior post Jacob Heilsberg, who came in averaging less than 10 points a game. His total: 23 points on seven field goals and 9 of 10 from the free-throw line.
“That was huge for us,” said Colfax coach Phil Hergert. “We’ve been trying to convince Jake all year to get to offensive boards and score his points that way. He did that tonight.”
Heilsberg had seven rebounds, six of them offensive. He also had eight of the Bulldogs’ (18-4) 15 third-quarter points, when they converted a 29-28 halftime deficit to a 43-32 game-deciding lead.
Kettle Falls (17-5) leading scorer, 6-7 senior Brandon Holibaugh, tracked by either Clint Jordan or Matthew Johnson all night, finished with a team-high 13 points, though eight came in the fourth quarter.
In the loser-out games, the Freeman boys (12-10) got 11 points from Andrew Dresbach and held off Newport (2-19). In the girls game, Maria Barranco scored 20 points and grabbed five rebounds as Newport (6-16) knocked off Kettle Falls (5-16).