Emerald Ridge will place for first time ever after beating deflated Bellarmine Prep squad
Relegated to a game they felt they shouldn’t have been playing early Friday afternoon, the Bellarmine Prep Lions began the day with a show of solidarity and possibly protest.
During announcement of starting lineups for their consolation bracket game against Class 4A South Puget Sound League rival Emerald Ridge, the entire team stood quietly with bowed heads in a single line in front of the scorers table at the Tacoma Dome.
“It was a protest,” Bellarmine athletic director Kevin Meines said. “The girls just wanted to show they were not happy.”
Once the ball tipped off, Emerald Ridge scored the game’s first 11 points before the Lions looked like they still wanted to be here. But Bellarmine crawled back into it and the contest settled into a back-and-forth affair before the Jaguars eventually earned the program’s first-ever state trophy with a 69-59 victory.
“We should have been in the semifinals,” Lions coach Chelle Miller said. “We wanted to show some effort, but it was hard to get them to play. They wanted to show some character.”
The character check came into play after Bellarmine lost to Eastlake in overtime in a Thursday quarterfinal, when a final Wolves shot from near half-court that video appears to show was released after the final buzzer nevertheless went down and was counted as good.
The 3-pointer turned what would have been a 60-59 Bellarmine victory into a 62-60 loss, and took the Lions out of championship contention.
The hangover effect from that defeat carried over into the first six minutes or so of the loser-out game against Emerald Ridge. But after Keiara Curtis finally broke the seal on the basket with her driving layup with 4:27 to play in the first quarter, Bellarmine slowly found its way back into the game.
A Kiara Stone 3-pointer with 7:24 left in the second quarter gave the Lions their first lead, 21-20, and the game remained close the rest of the way.
The Jaguars (21-7) will play in the fourth-sixth place game against either Gonzaga Prep or Woodinville on Saturday morning at 9:30 a.m. Win or lose, Emerald Ridge takes hardware home for the first time ever.
“We’ve just been working for this,” Jaguars senior Maya Barnett said. ”It’s what all of us seniors have been dreaming of, and it’s finally coming true.”
Barnett led four Jaguars in double figures scoring with 16 points, and completed a double-double with 14 rebounds. Teammate Ryah McGriff also had a double-double with 15 points and 12 boards.
Curtis led all scorers for the Lions with 21 points. Bellarmine Prep (22-9) finished with consecutive losses instead of playing in the state semifinals where the Lions felt they rightly belonged on Friday.
This story was originally published March 3, 2023 at 3:01 PM.