Knights are headliners
Sunnyside Christian had a nothing-to-lose mentality heading into Wednesday’s first-round State B basketball game against undefeated and top-ranked Sprague-Harrington at the Spokane Arena.
“We had two choices,” junior guard Tori Van Wingerden said, “we could either roll over and die, say we were supposed to lose, or we could just work hard and try to make headlines.”
Thirty-two minutes later, they still hadn’t lost anything, and the headlines were made.
Van Wingerden scored 19 points, and sophomore forward Emma Newhouse hit three free throws in the final 16.4 seconds as Sunnyside Christian completed the 58-54 upset to set up today’s quarterfinal with LaSalle.
“This is exciting. Any time you can play a No. 1-ranked team and give it everything you’ve got, and obviously we gave them a good game, this is exciting for us,” SC head coach Al Smeenk said. “We weren’t real excited when we found out we’d have to play them, but we decided that, hey, we’re going to play hard and leave everything on the floor that we could.”
The Knights (19-6) earned the No. 4 seed out of the Central Regional, consisting of districts 5 and 6, but they had been battle-tested, including three losses to Yakima Valley rival La Salle.
They tried running with the Falcons (26-1) in the first half, but fell behind by 10 points early in the second after two free throws by S-H junior point guard Roni Jo Mielke.
Smeenk has always stressed to his players the importance of getting to the free-throw line, and the Knights slowly, but surely, started to respond as the first half wound down.
“In order to get the line, you’ve gotta penetrate,” Smeenk said. “You’ve gotta go to the hoop, and that’s what they did.”
Starting with Emily Hernandez, who set the single-game free-throw record with 17 in last year’s first-round game against Toutle Lake, SC went to the line 16 times in the final 5 minutes, 23 seconds of the second quarter, making 13. When Melanie Van Wingerden capped the half with a pair of free throws with 16.8 seconds left, the Knights held a 34-33 halftime lead.
“They shot well from the free-throw line; that’s a huge part of the game,” S-H head coach Ed Shields said. “Now you give a team like that a hope of winning, and they’re really tough to beat.”
The Knights went to the line 13 more times in the second half, making 10, while the Falcons shot just 1 of 3.
Despite the free-throw advantage, the game stayed within four points the entire second half. S-H took its last lead with 1:30 left in the third quarter after a Mielke lay-up on the left-hand side put the Falcons ahead 45-43. Tori Van Wingerden hit her eighth and ninth free throws of the game to tie game at 45, and SC never trailed afterward.
“We just got outplayed today. We didn’t do the things inside to shut their easy passes down, and we didn’t adjust to the fouls,” Shields said. “In this tournament, if you take a day off, you’re done.”
The attention now shifts to the rival Lightning, who beat the Knights three times this season, including a 70-46 rout in the District 5 championship game.
“May the best team win,” Smeenk said. “We’ll give it everything we’ve got.”