Washington 1B basketball: Colton girls roll on; Pomeroy boys surge past ACH

Colton’s record-setting girls basketball team prides itself on defense and 3-point shooting.

The Wildcats don’t tend to get too self-reflective.

So after another in their long list of victories Friday night – a state-record 68 and counting – the Wildcats didn’t look for any magical formula that spelled the difference in a 68-43 victory over Almira/Coulee-Hartline in the regional round of State 1B play at Cheney High School.

Take the 10 consecutive points that Zoe Moser scored late in the first quarter that helped turn ACH’s early advantage into a 14-6 Wildcats lead.

“I started looking at the basket before I started shooting,” said Moser, a junior guard who scored 20 of her game-high 22 points in the first half. “That’s what the coach told me to do. It works, believe it or not.”

“We kind of have the mindset that we have a winning streak of zero and we’re just playing the next game, trying to get a winning streak of one,” Wildcats head coach Clark Vining said.

Pomeroy’s boys (21-3) capped the evening by rallying for a 52-45 win over ACH (19-5). The Pirates held ACH scoreless for the first 6:50 of the fourth quarter to pull away.

Both winners advance to the State 1B tournament at the Spokane Arena, which begins Thursday.

Colton (24-0) will seek its seventh consecutive state championship. The Wildcats are also moving in on the state’s all-time winning streak of 82 set by Brewster’s boys from 1973-77.

Girls

Colton 68, ACH 43: Early impressions were meaningless. The Wildcats went more than four minutes without scoring and missed close to 10 shots on their first possession.

Moser’s 10 quick points, which included two 3-pointers and encompassed just more than two minutes, changed the tone.

“Vining always says you shoot when you’re hot and you shoot to get hot,” Moser said.

“Maybe we were a little excited because we hadn’t played for a week and were itching to get back out there,” Vining said. “We kind of knew that if we kept hammering away that eventually they’d go.”

Colton hit 11 3-pointers, including a combined five by MaryAnn Jacobs and Kendyl Druffel, who came off the bench to score 11 points apiece.

Reinnee Rockett, playing her final game for the Warriors, made three 3-pointers and scored a team-best 16 points.

Pateros 44, Odessa-Harrington 32: Lorie LeDoux had 11 points, 13 rebounds, six steals and four assists to lead the Billygoats past the Titans in Wenatchee.

Jordyn Tanke and Katie DeWulf scored eight points apiece for Odessa-Harrington.

Boys

Pomeroy 53, ACH 45: Dallas Isaak scored nine of his 13 points during a stretch of 2:15 in the first quarter to give the Warriors an early edge. The lead grew to 20-15 early in the second quarter before Pomeroy responded with a 9-0 run, capped by 3-pointers by Tyson Feider and Scott Slaybaugh.

Neither team built a lead of more than three points during the next 11 minutes. ACH took a 39-36 edge into the fourth quarter.

The Pirates took control with a 10-0 run as Feider, who finished with a game-high 19 points, had a big 3-pointer with 4:35 left. Bryan McGreevy hit the back-breaking 3-pointer with 2:10 to go after the Pirates worked the shot clock down to nearly zero.

Pomeroy has lost twice to Garfield-Palouse and once to Waitsburg-Prescott.

Freshman post Payton Nielsen paced ACH with 14 points. ACH received just two points from its senior class.