La Salle advances to state title game

The La Salle girls basketball team has become accustomed to playing for a state championship, seeing as how they’ve made it to the finals of the State 2B tournament the past two years.

The Lightning will make it three straight appearances this year and will face Napavine, a team with no state title-game experience.

La Salle and Napavine won Friday night at the Arena and play tonight at 8 for the right to be crowned state champion.

In the first semifinal, Jasmine Stohr scored 28 points and pulled down nine rebounds and Megan Bonny scored six of her 12 points late in the fourth quarter as La Salle edged White Pass 54-47 in a physical game.

Napavine derailed defending champion Mossyrock 47-20 in the second semifinal with a balanced offense and hard-nosed defense.

The Tigers didn’t have anybody score in double figures, but got scoring from 11 of the 12 who played, with three contributing seven each. No Mossyrock player scored more than six.

Although Stohr set the tone early for La Salle, scoring 11 points, the Lightening trailed 25-23 after the first two quarters against White Pass.

The Panthers’ Breanna Moody, who scored 30 points in a quarterfinal win over St. George’s on Thursday, was held to eight first-half points.

La Salle coach Alyssa Goins was pleased with the way her team played on defense against Moody.

“We did a tremendous job of forcing Breanna to shoot the ball out of her comfort zone,” said Goins.

The second half belonged to the Lightning. La Salle outscored White Pass 12-10 in the third quarter to tie the game at 35 heading into the fourth. The Lightning ran away with the game in the fourth quarter, outscoring the Panthers 19-12.

Goins credited her defense.

“We picked up our effort on defense in the fourth and I think they got a little tired,” she said. “We used our press in the first three quarters to wear them down and then took advantage in the fourth.”

The game was physical from start to finish, with a lot of elbows thrown and bodies hitting the floor.

Goins welcomed the physical nature.

“This was like a heavyweight boxing match,” she said. “This is what State B is all about. Two teams playing their hearts out and leaving everything on the floor.”

Stohr agreed.

“The defense that we run causes a lot of chaos,” she said. “We tried to stay within our game. We weren’t trying to get into a brawl or anything.”

The win earned La Salle its third consecutive title-game appearance. The Lightning beat Curlew 54-38 in 2006 and fell 47-46 to Mossyrock in last year’s championship game.

Moody finished with a team-high 19 points and 14 rebounds and Mikel Elliott added 14 points to lead White Pass.

Stohr shot 11 of 18 from the field and seven of her team-high nine rebounds came on the offensive end.