State 2A Girls: Jamison Philip too much, Deer Park falls to Ellensburg in semifinal 58-50

YAKIMA – Jamison Philip scored a career-high 25 points with five rebounds and six assists and the second-seeded Ellensburg Bulldogs beat the third-seeded Deer Park Stags 58-50 in a State 2A semifinal at Yakima Valley SunDome on Friday.

Ellensburg (27-0) faces top-seeded Lynden (27-0) in the championship on Saturday in a rematch of last year’s title game, won by Lynden 43-40.

Ellie Markus added 15 points with 11 rebounds for Ellensburg, which used an 18-10 run in the fourth quarter to pull away.

Deer Park (25-1), in its first season in the 2A classification, takes on sixth-seeded Prosser (23-6) in the third-place game at 1 p.m.

Ashlan Bryant led Deer Park with 17 points, adding nine rebounds and three assists. Emma Bryant added 12 points.

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On a night where so much was amiss for Deer Park – an all-state opponent having a career night, 5-for-13 free throw shooting, two of its top three scorers without a point in the first half – a spot in Saturday night’s Class 2A state championship game was still for the taking.

But a 3-pointer with just more than a minute left that would give the third-seeded Stags the lead in a back-and-forth classic against No. 2 Ellensburg would hit rim, glass and rim again before falling off.

It was the last chance the Stags had to tie the score or go ahead.

Ellensburg, the champs in 2022 and ’23, held off Deer Park 58-50, and will play defending champion and top-seed Lynden in a rematch of last year’s final at 7 p.m. Saturday.

Unbeaten no more, the Stags will meet No. 6 Prosser for third place at 1p.m. Saturday.

“For all the little things we didn’t do well, we were an inch away from taking the lead with a minute to go,” Deer Park KC Ahrens said. “The whole place thought it was going in.”

The Stags didn’t quite follow the script Ahrens had laid out.

Ahrens wanted CWAC player of the year Jamison Philip, who will start her fourth state title game Saturday, forced to go left to her off-hand. Instead, she drove the lane resulting in a layup, an open teammate or a trip to the line.

The Montana State-bound guard tallied a career-high 25 points, including 10 of 14 free throws and six assists to go with the tournament-record 13 she had in the quarterfinals versus Bainbridge.

“For the first time all year we weren’t disciplined enough to play off our scouting report,” Ahrens said. “Tonight, we kind of shot ourselves in the foot. It was a letdown.”

And one night after they combined for 38 points Thursday against W.F. West, Brooklyn Coe and Jacey Boesel finished with 10 points between them.

“We needed to get them going, and get them some more shots in the second half,” Ahrens said.

Sophomore Ashlan Bryant led the way with 17 points for the Stags, and Emma Bryant had 10. Kaitlyn Scott was 3 for 3 for eight points.

Ellie Markus made 6 of 7 shots on her way to 15 points for the Bulldogs, who set a school-record 27th win against no defeats. Markus added 11 rebounds and Bella Standish had 16 points.

Other than the final seconds when Deer Park (25-1) was scrambling, the game was what you’d expect from two teams that began the night unbeaten.

Each team took and answered the other’s best punches, with the lead flipping 15 times. It was the haymaker that the Stags just missed landing that allowed Ellensburg to slip away.