Colfax, Freeman take 1st steps
YAKIMA – Northeast A League rivals Colfax and Freeman maintained a collision course for a state championship rematch on Wednesday at the State 1A girls basketball tournament in the SunDome.
Defending champion Colfax needed little time to dispatch Overlake 58-34. The Bulldogs will face White Swan in the late quarterfinal at 9 tonight.
The Bulldogs have an 11-game state-tournament winning streak intact – that includes a 2005 title game win over Freeman – and are 16-1 in their last 17 state tournament games.
Colfax took control of the game with an 11-2 run in the first period, repeatedly forcing the Owls to turn the ball over in the face of the Bulldogs’ trademark press.
“We told the kids we needed to use our defensive pressure to establish the tempo,” Colfax assistant coach Tom Fowler said. “We wanted to see what they would do with full-court pressure.”
What the Owls did was turn the ball over 25 times, 15 of those in the second half.
Abby Bruya led Colfax with 10 points off the bench while Elise Markley and Jordan Harazin chipped in nine points each.
Freeman 47, Bush 19
The Scotties waited 360 days to get back into the SunDome and remove the bitter taste of last year’s title game loss.
Freeman wasted little time, smacking Bush to advance into today’s 5:30 quarterfinal against Bellevue Christian.
Freeman lost the 2005 state championship game to league rival Colfax 53-44 and was beaten twice by the Bulldogs in the regular season before gaining a measure of revenge in the District 7 title game.
Freeman understood that a chance for revenge at state required a win over a Bush team about which it knew little.
The Scotties roared to an 18-5 first-period lead and never slowed down in advancing to the quarterfinals for the second straight year behind a strong defensive effort. Freeman led 29-7 at halftime.
“We threw a couple different looks at them and it seemed to work,” Freeman coach Matt Gregg said. “For us not to get into foul trouble playing that aggressively on defense was huge.”
The aggressive defense paid off in 31 Bush turnovers which Freeman turned into 27 points.
Jessie DePell led Freeman in scoring with 19 points – one more than her season average – in just 13 minutes.
Lake Roosevelt 58, Columbia (Burbank) 43
The Raiders shook loose of the pesky Coyotes with a 37-19 stretch in the second and third periods to advance to the quarterfinals. The Raiders will play Zillah at 4 p.m. today.
Amanda Marchand and Lachelle Ives scored 14 points apiece for Lake Roosevelt. Jessica Loe had 10 points and seven rebounds.