Dartmouth commit Hiatt, Edmonds-Woodway overwhelm Lincoln in 3A quarterfinal
It felt clear minutes into Thursday Class 3A state tournament quarterfinal game against Edmonds-Woodway that it wasn’t going to be Lincoln’s night.
The Abes were flustered, frustrated and out of sorts from the tip. Edmonds-Woodway — cool, confident and composed — was anything but.
Edmonds-Woodway led by six after a quarter. The lead ballooned to 32 points by the end of the third quarter. Edmonds-Woodway held Lincoln to just 13 total points in the second and third quarters en route to a 73-36 rout.
“We’re coming out confident,” Edmonds-Woodway senior guard Cam Hiatt said. “We’ve been playing some really good basketball, we scouted them really well. We had a really good game plan and we executed it really, really well. I’m really proud of our guys, not just me, that’s all of us top to bottom. We executed.”
Hiatt, a 6-foot-4 Dartmouth-bound senior guard, was as good as advertised. He poured in a game-high 33 points with 14 rebounds and shot a perfect 10-of-10 from the free throw line.
Edmonds-Woodway shot 48 percent from the field and held Lincoln to 23 percent shooting from the floor. Lincoln, which likes to get out in transition, never could get on the fast break.
“They come from a brand of basketball that likes to get up and down and that’s tough,” Hiatt said. “But when you get them in the halfcourt, you make them play possession basketball and you make them execute, that changes things and it changed it for us today.”
Lincoln sophomore guard Trey Collier led the team with 11 points. No other Abes scored in double digits.
“Credit to them, they played really tough and did not give us anything easy,” Lincoln coach Ryan Rogers said. “They executed well on the offensive end and it really hurt us not being able to get in transition. So credit to them, they had a good game plan and they stuck to it.”
Lincoln unraveled emotionally as the game wore on, drawing several technical fouls, two to Lincoln players and one assessed to Rogers.
“It’s always splitting hairs but I think the refs let a couple of things slide, which frustrated our young kids, which we have to be better at,” Rogers said. “Being more composed.
“There’s perks and disadvantages to having a young team and I think one of those things is just to continue to be mentally tough and get through those things and let the refs make the tough calls and make the decisions.”
That’s the silver lining: the Abes are young. Barring any unforeseen transfer activity, Lincoln will return its entire roster next season. For a team that won the 3A Puget Sound League and the 3A District 3/4 title, that’s welcome news. Lincoln should be a 3A state title contender next season. While the youth hasn’t bitten Rogers’ squad many times this year, it reared its head against a veteran Edmonds-Woodway team on Thursday.
“The kids played hard, it wasn’t lack of effort or anything like that,” Rogers said. “Just things we have to continue to work on and get better at.”
Edmonds-Woodway, meanwhile, advances to a semifinal matchup against No. 2 Mount Spokane, which rallied late to beat Bellarmine Prep in overtime on Thursday night.
Lincoln will face Bellarmine Prep in a consolation game at 12:15 p.m. on Friday. The winner of the game will play for fourth/sixth place on Saturday.
