Bellevue shows its dominance in rout of Mount Si
Published 9:15 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008
Near total domination.
That’s what fans saw as the Bellevue Wolverines scored 20 straight points in the first quarter and never looked back in trouncing the Mount Si Wildcats 73-23 in KingCo girls’ basketball action Friday night at Mount Si High School.
“If there’s a better basketball team than Bellevue, I’d like to see them play. We’ve actually played worse than this before, and Bellevue plays great defense. They can all move their feet, they take you out of your offense and they make you create on your own, and it’s just awful hard to get any kind of a rhythm whenever you play Bellevue. But the nice thing is, is that they have eight seniors that will not be playing here next year,” said Mount Si coach Dirk Hansen.
Even after losing star player Kedzie Gunderson to graduation last year (she now plays college ball at the University of Oregon), the Wolverines don’t seem to have suffered. Stifling defense, aided by their size advantage, forced many missed shots and turnovers by the Wildcats.
Bellevue also showed how deep a team it is. Jill Bell came off the bench and scored 10 for the Wolverines, and that led all scorers. The reason for that is virtually every Bellevue player checked into the game and contributed something to the final score.
Rachel Travis hit a couple of three-pointers and scored nine to lead the Wildcats, who at times showed feistiness and forced jump balls and turnovers. But those opportunities were few and far between, and were balanced out by their inability to solve this Wolverine juggernaut.
Hansen forecasts a different story for the future, mostly because his team will be more experienced.
“We’ll have the seniors next year, and I really think it’ll be a more competitive game when we play them later in the year, and I think its going to be a lot more competitive next year. They’re still going to be a good basketball team, but I still think we’ll play them better down the road,” he said.
The Wildcats will next play a KingCo cross-divisional game against their Valley rivals, the Cedarcrest Red Wolves, on Wednesday, Jan. 9, then return home to play Sammamish on Friday, Jan. 11.
Ellensburg wins in close game against Wildcats
In what can be best described as the wildest game for the Mount Si girls’ basketball team all year, the Wildcat team gave it its all, but was defeated by Ellensburg, from Central Washington’s Mid-Valley League, 55-51 in nonleague action Friday night at Mount Si High School. Nicci Landdeck led all scorers with 23 points to pace the Wildcats in defeat. Tiffany Ulmer scored 17 to pace the Bulldogs’ winning effort.
“That’s the best we ever played Ellensburg. We play them every year, and they’ve beaten us by 25 or 30 points every year. We played them in summer league; they beat us by 30 points, and I really thought we had them tonight; a few more rebounds and we would have won the game,” said Mount Si coach Dirk Hansen.
The game was wild from the start. The Bulldogs and Wildcats exchanged leads in the first quarter a total of seven times, were tied at several other points in the quarter and the two teams were both very physical and scrappy. This continued into the second quarter, when Ellensburg broke out on an 8-0 run at one point to get the lead. The Bulldog team was only able to increase its lead to five points, which was its margin at half-time with the score 31-26.
The Bulldogs held their lead for most of the third quarter, but Mount Si had a 6-0 scoring run that started late in the quarter, keyed by a three-pointer from Rachel Travis, which tied the game at 38 at the end of three quarters. This run lasted into early in the fourth quarter.
The fourth quarter was especially intense. Kristen Travis’ three-point play (she was fouled on her shot attempt, which went in) gave Mount Si a 44-40 lead. It looked as if the Wildcats may just pull this one out.
Ellensburg stormed back, however, and scored six straight points, four of them by Ulmer, and the Bulldogs were up 46-44.
The Wildcats tied it at 46 on a shot by Lizzie Finnegan, but the Bulldogs took the lead back and had a 52-48 lead with 24 seconds left in regulation when Rachel Travis hit a huge three-pointer for Mount Si, which cut the Ellensburg lead to just one point.
Amanda Faire hit a pair of free throws for the Bulldogs, and then the Wildcats’ Kristen Travis missed a three-pointer off the rim, which would have tied the game at 54 and likely sent it into overtime. Ulmer iced it for the Bulldogs by hitting one of her two free throws, and the team went home to Ellensburg with the win.
Kristen Travis was disappointed that her three-point shot didn’t go in.
“Yeah, that was really tough, but I wish it would’ve went in,” she said. Despite missing that shot, she still scored 11 points to pace the Wildcats, who had only five players score in the game.
Even with the loss, Hansen said his team’s effort sent the Wildcats’ cross-state rivals a message for the future.
“We got their attention, and we get them next year over in their gym, but only we’ll be playing with five seniors instead of no seniors and so we’re excited about playing them again. Our nonleague schedule’s tough this year. We don’t have any gimmes, and it’s just going to make us better.”
