Defensive adjustment helps Gonzaga Prep girls down Ferris; Jayden Stevens paces Pups boys over Saxons

It wasn’t always pretty, but defensive battles rarely are.

In their first meeting in a nonleague game, Gonzaga Prep allowed 69 points to Ferris in a 28-point loss. The Bullpups vowed it wouldn’t happen again.

The Bullpups limited the Saxons to 10 points in the first half, Lucy Lynn and Sitara Byrd scored 14 points apiece and Gonzaga Prep downed visiting Ferris 47-31 in a Greater Spokane League girls basketball game on Tuesday.

“It wasn’t really fun for us, but we kept shooting and luckily we pulled out the win,” Lynn said of the offensive struggle both teams found. “Our defense was great, too. So that helped.”

“That’s us in a nutshell,” Gonzaga Prep coach Mike Arte said about the defensive effort. “We have moments where we just look great on offense, and then we have those lapse moments like the beginning of the fourth quarter where we can’t even get a good look at the basket. And that’s something that we have to keep continually working on.”

Arte credited a 2-2 zone with a matchup defender in the middle – inserted at practice on Monday – for limiting the Saxons’ attack.

“I thought it really slowed (Ferris) down and did a nice job on them,” he said. “We gave up like nine 3s to them the first time, and we really limited their looks at the basket.”

With the win, the Bullpups (15-3, 6-1) stayed one game ahead of Lewis and Clark and two ahead of Central Valley for the GSL top seed to the District 8 4A tournament.

Elliott Hencz paced Ferris (13-4, 4-2) with 14 points. The Saxons are tied with Mt. Spokane for the second GSL seed in 3A and hold the head-to-head tiebreaker.

Lynn had seven points in the first quarter, when the Bullpups took a 13-7 lead. Taliah Lee hit a 3 from the wing early in the second quarter to make it 20-7, and Ferris coach Scott Ward asked for timeout.

Lee hit another 3 a couple of minutes later, though, and the lead grew to 19.

The Saxons cut the lead to 10 early in the fourth quarter as Hencz and Kennedy Smith both hit 3-pointers, but Ferris didn’t hit another field goal down the stretch.

“It was a huge win,” Lynn said. “It’s one of the last games before we go to playoffs. So we just had to keep that momentum going.”

Boys

Gonzaga Prep 75, Ferris 62: Jayden Stevens scored 24 points and added five blocked shots and the Bullpups (12-6, 7-0) beat the visiting the Saxons (12-5, 4-3) in the early game.

Carter Collins added 19 points and Jamil Miller had 12 for the Bullpups.

“This was a big one,” Stevens said. “I mean, coming back from earlier in the season when they beat us and then coming back to now and beating them. It just feels good.

“We’re starting to play together, starting to gel a little bit better. I think we can play better basketball and it’s up to us to come out and show it.”

“The ball has to run through Jayden wherever he is,” Gonzaga Prep coach Matty McIntyre said. “We know that other teams know that. So they were loading up on Jayden in the first half, but the trust that we have in him to make the right play – and he’s fine being a distributor as well, and making guys around him better.

“That’s what the truly great players do is they can make the dudes around him better, and he does that.”

Trayce Atkins led Ferris with 40 points and six 3-pointers. The Saxons were without starters Ray Ray Bergerson and Kruz Wheeler.

“Trayce gave us everything he had, man,” Ferris coach Sean Mallon said. “It’s tough with those two guys out, so he has to carry the load obviously. That’s not an excuse, (Gonzaga Prep) played well.

“We had chances in this one. We were just gonna have to play really, really well with those guys out and you know, there’s a couple stretches there we’d like to have back.”

Atkins had all of Ferris’ points in the first quarter, but the Saxons trailed 16-9 after one quarter. He scored the first nine points of the second quarter, and his contested layin at the midway point tied it at 18.

But the Bullpups ran off three straight baskets in the paint by Stevens and Miller and led 37-26 at the half, despite Atkins’ 24 points.

Stevens had the first two baskets of the second half, including a breakaway two-handed dunk that made it a 15-point game, and G-Prep led 56-35 after three quarters. Atkins only had four points in the quarter.

“We were having a really hard time containing Atkins, obviously in the first half,” McIntyre said. “He had a whale of a game, really. And so we had to shift a lot of our attention onto him and try to make somebody else do it, which we finally got that corrected in the second half.”

Collins had a pair of 3-pointers in the second quarter while it was still close, then added a two-handed dunk and step-back 3 in the fourth. His late 3 made it 74-49 with 2 minutes to go and McIntyre sent in his reserves.

“He can come in and light it up off the bench,” McIntyre said of Collins. “He’s a threat whenever he catches the ball.”