West Valley earns honorary 2A EvCo championship with state semifinal victory over Tumwater girls, 43-40
The West Valley High School girls basketball team has made a couple of things crystal clear during this week’s 2A state tournament at the Yakima Valley SunDome.
They like playing teams from the 2A Evergreen Conference and they don’t mind waiting until the final seconds to secure victories.
Wednesday, the Eagles blew out Black Hills, 67-36, before knocking off W.F. West on Thursday with a buzzer-beating putback by guard Jillian Taylor following her own missed shot, 44-43.
On Friday evening, it was Tumwater’s turn to take a heart-breaking loss to West Valley, falling 43-40 when Hailey Marlow made a long three as time expired to send the Eagles into the championship game Saturday against top-seeded Lynden.
The Thunderbirds will play for third place against a defensively minded Burlington-Edison at 11:15 a.m. The loser of that game receives the fifth-place trophy.
Marlow was West Valley’s leading scorer with 14 points – though she had missed all six of her 3-point attempts before the game winner. Tumwater was led by forward Natalie Sumrok’s game-high 15 points as the Eagles stalked the T-Birds usual array of three-points shooters with relentless contests.
“They contended our shots, so none of them were easy and we just didn’t have a good shooting night,” said Tumwater coach Robin Johnson.
Tumwater finished without a trey in 11 attempts as no player other than Sumrok scored more than six points. The T-Birds did meet their ongoing numerical goals of outrebounding each opponent – 40-27 over West Valley – and staying below 12 turnovers despite their high-speed style. They coughed the ball up just 10 times.
In fact, for a long stretch, Tumwater proved it had shaken off the clear case of nerves that had accompanied the school’s first visit to state in girls basketball since 2011 on Thursday, during a win over East Valley.
“They came out really strong and played really hard. I don’t think the jitters were there today,” Johnson said of her players
They shot to the lead and led by nine early in the second half, 25-16, after a short jumper by Sumrok.
A 12-4 Eagles run from that point drew them to within a point of the T-Birds. After West Valley’s Aliyah Henry scored inside over a fallen defender to put the Eagles up, 30-29, in the first minute of the final quarter, it was Tumwater trying to claw back.
“We went through a stretch where we made quite a few back-to-back mistakes,” Johnson said
But claw back Tumwater did.
Though back-to-back threes by Taylor gave West Valley a brief seven-point lead at 36-29, Tumwater went on an 11-2 run of its own to retake the lead, 40-38, on a pair of free throws by Aubrey Amendala with 47 seconds to play.
Taylor countered with a driving layup to tie. When Tumwater didn’t score on its next possession, West Valley took a time out with the ball in front of its own bench, 12 seconds from the end.
Seeing the Eagles formation, Johnson called a timeout of her own to reset the T-Bird defense, then Amendala took a foul Tumwater had to give to take some time off the clock.
West Valley inbounded again with eight seconds to go and Marlow flashed the Eagles buzzer-beating magic at an EvCo team for the second day in a row.
“I couldn’t be more proud of our team and what they’ve done, what they’ve accomplished,” Johnson said of a sophomore-dominated team that reached the state final four.
East Valley 52, W.F. West 41
There will be no trophy for the 2018 champion Bearcats, as they took a five-point lead briefly during the first quarter, but ultimately fell to the Red Devils in a loser-out game.
Annika Waring ended her highly-successful career with a game-high 10 points for W.F. West.