Mount Si falls to Kangs

Published 8:24 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008

SNOQUALMIE – The Mount Si Wildcats girls basketball team played its first game in exactly a week last Saturday and their offense showed evidence of the time off the court. In an offensive display that was reminiscent of a loss to Newport in the first round of last season’s Kingco Tournament, Mount Si shot approximately 22 percent from the floor as the Wildcats fell to 1-1 with a home loss to the Lake Washington Kangaroos.

Lake Washington junior post Megan Sanders scored a game-high 20 points as the Kingco 4A Kangaroos won 52-39.

“It was really good passing by the rest of the team that kind of helped out,” said Sanders, praising her teammates. “I saw the open cutters and that was kind of cool.”

Mount Si coach Dirk Hansen was unhappy with the cold offensive performance.

“Well, after the game [in the locker room], I told the girls, ‘The good news is we know we can’t shoot any worse than that,’ so, you know, it happens, and I’ll tell you, hats off to Lake Washington, man. I thought they played really, really well, and we came up and played well at times but not consistently enough tonight to produce a win, but, still, we gave it the good old Wildcat effort,” Hansen said.

The Kangaroos led the game from the opening tip, despite their own early offensive struggles; Lake Washington went only 4-21 from the floor in the first quarter. Ultimately, it was the Kangaroos that found a decent offensive stroke and took care of business.

Junior forward Nicole Remish scored 10 points to lead Mount Si. Senior guard Rachel Travis and junior forward Tori Ewing each scored seven points to pace the Wildcats. Senior swing player Anne Phippard and post Alissa Allen each scored 9 to pace the Kangaroos.

As Mount Si opens Kingco 3A play this week, the team will be looking for a better offensive effort. Hansen cautioned, though, that more practice on shooting is not the answer.

“[The] funny thing is that we take care of all the fundamentals every single practice,” he said. “We can’t shoot anymore than what we already do in practice, and this is one of those things where the only thing that you can really control in the game of basketball is your energy on defense, because offense can be unpredictable as we all know.”

Hansen added that fans can expect to see a hard working team on court this year.

“We are what we are. We play man-to-man defense, and we’re a little deficient in some areas,” Hansen said. But it is what it is and we’re a tight team. I’m not one of those fancy polished coaches. We’re going to go out there, we’re going to play man-to-man defense, we’re going to attack the basket and we’re going to play hard.”

The win, when coupled with a victory last week against Kingco 3A favorite Issaquah, meant a lot to the Kangaroos. The team will be playing a schedule that includes 4A state powers Redmond and Roosevelt, and 4A national power Garfield.

“I think that’s [the two wins] are huge because we brought up our confidence. We’re putting all the team together because we’re all like new. Even our coach (Marisa Craine) is new, so it’s nice,” said Sanders.

Mount Si opens the Kingco 3A home schedule against Liberty on Thursday, then wraps up their non-league home slate with their third Saturday game in a row against a Kingco 4A Juanita. Game time for both games is 7:30 p.m. at Mount Si High School.