Tigers rule 4A ranks
TACOMA – Quickness was the headliner Saturday night, and the reality was Lewis and Clark just had too much of it for Prairie in the Tacoma Dome.
The Tigers won their first State 4A girls basketball title by running past the perennial state-power Falcons 66-44.
It was two lithe 6-footers who took star turns for LC, senior Heather Bowman and junior Katelan Redmon.
On one end they teamed with senior Hannah Rothstrom to neutralize Prairie’s usually dominating front line. On the other they proved too quick to guard.
Bowman is the Greater Spokane League’s all-time leading scorer (she added 16 Saturday, bringing her total to 1,580), but it was Redmon who put on the early show this night. The quick forward, who transferred from Mt. Spokane at the beginning of the year to play for her uncle, scored 11 points in the first 3 minutes, 14 seconds of the second quarter, hitting five consecutive shots, building LC’s lead from seven to 15 in the span.
She had 17 at the half, only two below her season high. She finished with a season-high 22 points on 10-of-12 shooting.
“I caught fire tonight,” she said. “When my teammates got me the ball, I knew we had the game.”
“She’s had this in her all along,” said LC coach Jim Redmon. “I don’t know what she ate this morning, but we’re going to feed it to her before every game next year.”
With Redmon leading the way, the Tigers’ led 40-21 in an eye-opening first half for the statewide television audience. The game may not have been broadcast that way, but the Tigers were playing in high-definition, hitting 17 of 28 shots (61 percent), completely disrupting Prairie’s offense while forcing 12 turnovers, and out-rebounding the taller Falcons by better than a two-to-one margin.
“We knew if we got in a half-court game with them they would beat us, so we had to get it in an up-and-down game,” the coaching Redmon said. “It started that way, and that made it easy, because the flow we wanted came right away. Sometimes when you’re trying to force tempo with pressure and it doesn’t happen early, you get frustrated.”
It was only the Falcons (26-3) who got frustrated. But they still tried to wrest back the momentum after halftime, attacking inside with University of Idaho-bound Katie Madison (finishing with 11 points) and Merritt Cameron (another 10). It caused LC (26-4) to get into foul trouble – Bowman and Redmon each picked up their third in the quarter – and changed the momentum – a little.
Prairie cut the lead to 15 at one point, but, for the second night in a row, Rothstrom made a comeback-killing shot, this one with less than a minute left. It extended the lead back to 17, quieted the Prairie fans and, when coupled with the Tiger defense, ensured the state championship was headed to Lewis and Clark.
“Every time we needed a big basket, someone new stepped up,” said Bowman, the tournament Most Valuable Player. “That was incredible. When we started like that, it got everyone going.”
In contrast to Prairie, who was appearing in its eighth state title game in an attempt for its fifth crown, the Tigers hadn’t played in one since 1988, when they lost to Shadle Park.
But it was LC that had the poised look, from the opening score – a cat-quick drive by Ren Mallory after a steal by Brittany Kennedy – to the bench-clearing last 2 minutes.
“We’ve waited a long time for this type of play from these kids,” Redmon said. “We’ve had it in us all year. It sure picked a good night for it, on such a big stage.”