Kellogg holds off Priest River

Kellogg’s girls looked like they might just have another run in them Saturday night in the 3A District I basketball tournament.

The Wildcats survived an early second-half scare from Priest River before cruising to a 61-45 victory over the Spartans at North Idaho College.

Kellogg (19-2), which finished an unlikely second at state a year ago, plays Bonners Ferry at 7 p.m. Tuesday for the district title and an automatic state berth. BF’s Badgers (14-7) got a game-high 21 points from senior Becky Lowther en route to a 61-39 victory over St. Maries.

Priest River (14-7) and St. Maries (6-16) meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday in a loser-out game. The winner of that game takes on the loser of the Kellogg-BF contest at 7 p.m. Wednesday for the right to travel to Grangeville for a Saturday play-in game against District III’s runner-up.

Sophomore post Amanda Seeling scored 13 points and pulled down a game-high 16 rebounds in a Kellogg attack that had four of five starters in double figures.

The Wildcats, however, watched the Spartans cut a 10-point halftime deficit to two with an 8-0 run to start the second half. After Kellogg’s Marisa Bush ended her team’s drought with a short jumper, junior Lacy Hopkins brought Priest River within one, 36-35, with a 3-pointer from the top of the key.

Kellogg then seemed to regain its composure, stretching the lead to 48-38 on senior guard Kaela Calabretta’s 3-pointer at the 1:30 mark of the third quarter and never looked back.

“At first I was kind of scared when they went on that run at the beginning of the second half and they were on fire,” said Seeling, who later in the evening was named the Intermountain League’s most valuable player. “But then we started shooting, and I was like ‘OK, we got this.’

“Our team handles pressure well, so when they started scoring, we just had to settle down and rely on our defense, because that’s what we’ve been working on the most this year, and get into our set offense.”

Kellogg coach Steve Bourgard said his strategy when the game got close was to let his team just play through it.

“I almost called timeout a couple of times during that run,” said Bourgard, whose Wildcats fell to the Spartans by one point in the teams’ final regular-season meeting. “But I didn’t want to burn a timeout, because I thought we might need it later.

“They got it two one, and I finally called a timeout – we regrouped after that and built the lead back up.”

Calabretta had a team-high 15 points for Kellogg, who also got 12 points from Bush and 11 from Katie Dumont.

Hopkins finished with a game-high 18 points for Priest River.

Following the games, league officials announced the 2007 All-Intermountain League team. Earning honors were Darbie Shelden of St. Maries; Ashley Porter of Timberlake; Lowther, Kaitie Poston and Camille Robertson of Bonners Ferry; Bush and Stephanie Cantrall of Kellogg; and Hopkins and Tabitha Clark of Priest River.