Charter’s run ends

CALDWELL – Cinderella got sick Friday night, ending Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy’s drive for the state championship.

Chris Shaw, a 5-foot-8 senior guard and the Panthers’ surest ball-handler, woke up with strep throat Friday morning. He didn’t play Friday night, and turnover-plagued Coeur d’Alene Charter lost a State 1A semifinal 59-35 to Greenleaf Friends Academy.

The loss snapped Coeur d’Alene Charter’s seven-game winning streak.

“Without Chris tonight, everything was just a struggle,” Panthers coach Brian Childs said. “Certainly, our biggest weakness is ball-handling. I was holding my breath with every pass.”

The coach has the chance to turn blue again today. He said Shaw’s prognosis for today’s noon PST third-place game is “pretty doubtful.”

The Panthers (21-4) play Cascade, a loser in Friday’s late semifinal game, at Caldwell High School. Greenleaf plays inside the Idaho Center in Nampa for the State 1A title this morning against Genesee.

Making matters potentially worse for the Panthers’ tourney finale, leading scorer Josiah Menzies may have aggravated his sprained right knee in a collision with teammate David Baker with less than a minute to go in his team’s first loss in nearly a month.

“I would look for him to try to gut it out,” Childs said. “

Two nights after scoring 24 points in the Panthers’ first state tournament game, Menzies scored just nine points, and only three after halftime. He was 3 for 9 from the floor, reflecting the Panthers’ overall inability to put the ball in the basket against the Grizzlies (20-5).

It didn’t help that Greenleaf’s guard tandem of Brandt Graber and Matthew Choate harassed David Baker and any other Panther who dared handle the ball. Greenleaf forced Coeur d’Alene Charter into nine first-half turnovers, scored eight points off Panthers miscues and planted the seeds for a 13-0 run that would break the game wide-open in the third quarter.

“We got off to a decent start, and they hit a couple shots and got a couple turnovers,” Childs said

The early turnovers proved costly, and Childs admitted the shaky offense could be traced back to the time Shaw spent in the emergency room at Nampa’s Mercy Medical Center receiving intravenous treatments to battle the virus that had taken hold of him.

“He’s such a competitor that if he could have gone, he would have,” Childs said.

But without Shaw, Baker was forced into a full-time role as a point guard, which took the 6-3 senior swingman out of his customary role as a player who flirts with low-post theatrics.

“Chris broke his thumb last year, and the last seven or eight games of the season, David took over (at point guard),” Childs said. “It takes him away from the basket, and he’s not as much of an offensive threat.”

Baker still scored seven points in the first half and finished as the Panthers’ leading scorer. But he only tallied 11 points.

Greenleaf, on the other hand, put three players in double figures, including game-high scorer Trevor Douty, who poured in 14 points despite picking up his third foul with 2 minutes, 46 left in the first half. Choate added 13 points, and Neil Kyger scored eight of his 10 points before halftime.

Douty’s jump shot over Austin Folnagy with 6:38 left in the third quarter concluded a stretch of 13 unanswered points and gave the Grizzlies from District III a commanding 43-18 lead.

Minutes later, after Menzies was tagged with his fourth foul, Greenleaf’s Tyreill Dock floated in a layin for a 47-20 advantage.