State 2B boys: Liberty sweats out semifinal win, will meet Kittitas for title

It was a “two T-Shirt type of game” for Liberty head coach Mike Thacker.

His Lancers assembled a 9-2 lead in the first quarter and never looked back from there.

Liberty, after failing to qualify for state last season, advanced the 2B title game after knocking of No. 2-seeded Life Christian Academy on Friday at the Spokane Arena.

The plan for Liberty was to grab a lead and keep it. Senior guard Chase Burnham single-handedly accomplished that, drilling his first three 3-pointers to give the Lancers their initial advantage.

“That’s not the team you want to come from behind against,” Thacker said. “In fact, that’s probably not the team that would let you come from behind.

“I just kept telling my coaches: ‘Don’t let this lead go away.’ ”

And it didn’t.

But it wasn’t it easy for Thacker and the Lancers, and it showed postgame for Liberty’s animated head coach, sporting a soaked dress shirt and dripping beads of sweat as he exited the court for the Lancers’ locker room.

The most stressful moment came at the end of the game, as LCA started to rally. Eagles guard Noah Robinson made a layup with 2:39 remaining, and star senior guard Luke Lovelady converted a three-point play to put the Eagles within three.

Liberty junior guard Brandon Holling scored off an offensive rebound. LCA came out empty-handed in its next possessions, and Haas made 2 of 4 free throws to ice it.

One of the biggest challenges for the Lancers was the Eagles’ size. Lovelady, their star guard who averaged more than 23 points, was the tallest of them all at 6-foot-8.

Pressuring the Eagles was the key and Thacker thought Liberty executed the plan well.

“When Lovelady caught the ball, we wanted him to be way out,” Thacker said. “We were tying to pressure them and get them out of their normal area where they caught the ball.”

The Lancers return to the state title game for the second time in three years. Liberty fell to Morton-White Pass 72-57 in the 2015 state championship game.

Reaching that point again means a lot for the Lancers’ program.

“We’ve grown up together and we’ve played basketball together for a long time,” Burnham said. “It just means a lot to have this ride together with my brothers here and my whole team. It’s just a great experience.”

Liberty will face Kittitas in the title game after the top-ranked Coyotes (23-0) knocked off St. George’s 67-58 in the other semifinal.

St. George’s controlled much of the game, establishing a lead early and sustaining it into the fourth quarter.

But unlike the Lancers, the Dragons (18-9) couldn’t hold the Coyotes at bay all game.

The momentum started to dwindle when Kittitas’ Brock Ravet buried a 3-pointer from deep and followed with a three-point play to cut the lead to 54-52 with 4:34 remaining. Xander Werkman scored on a putback for the Dragons, but Ravet followed with a layup and Connor Brown sunk a 3-pointer with 1:33 left, giving the Coyotes their first lead since the 3:57 mark in the first quarter.

Ravet, who scored 40 points on 11-of-23 shooting, made 5 of 6 free throws down the game to seal the game for the Coyotes.

The result wasn’t ideal, but for Dragons’ head coach Ryan Peplinski, there was no shame in losing to Kittitas, which entered the game with an average margin of victory of 29.

“I thought they played their hearts out,” he said of his team. “Our kids fought. And they didn’t give up.”

St. George’s was presented a brutal blow after its starting point guard, Erik Farias, went down with an apparent left knee injury. The sophomore, who averages a team-high 21.5 points, was sorely missed down the stretch.

Peplinski acknowledged how easy it would have been easy for his team to succumb and been blown out. But the Dragons battled through it.

“You think most teams would hang their heads, but I don’t know, that gave us some extra oomph,” sophomore guard Noah Halliburton-Link said. “That kid just plays his heart out every game and my mentality was to play as hard as I can for him.”

Junior wing Cade Peplinski led the Dragons with 17 points and seven rebounds. Sophomore forward Werkman added 16 points and nine rebounds.