By Alec Dietz / [email protected]
RIDGEFIELD — Back in its very first sport this season, the Tumwater women basketball workforce barely scraped by a troublesome, stingy Washougal squad in its season opener, 56-51, in November.
Now three months later, within the 2A District IV semifinals at Ridgefield Monday, the Thunderbirds dealt with the Panthers from begin to end in a dominant 46-26 win to maneuver on to the district championship.
The T-Birds will play Hudson’s Bay on Friday in Battle Ground, trying to repeat as district champions.
“It feels awesome,” T-Bird guard Aubrey Amendala stated. “Working so hard for something and getting there, it’s awesome.”
It didn’t come practically as simple because the rating instructed, nevertheless, because the Thunderbirds struggled to place the ball via the web and relied on a dominant protection to beat the Panthers.
The Panthers shot simply 19.6% from the sector and made one 3-pointer. They scored in single digits in three quarters, and simply seven factors mixed within the first and third quarter.
“They’re such a good team, we worked a lot on how we wanted to guard that,” Tumwater coach Robin Johnson stated. “I thought the kids executed well. We wanted to limit their big scorers’ numbers.”
Paced by Aubrey Amendala’s 14 factors, and Natalie Sumrok’s 12 factors, the T-Birds did sufficient on offense to get the job accomplished and transfer on within the district event.
“They were really strong defensively, they play tough, they made it really difficult for us to score,” Johnson stated. “We just talked about, even if it didn’t come easy, to keep grinding and trying to get to the rim and trying to get buckets any way we can get them.”
The Thunderbirds stated the important thing to Monday’s sport, versus their earlier sport with the Panthers again in November, was protection, and their adjustment on the boards, with small guard Regan Brewer knocking down a team-high eight rebounds and the remainder of the T-Birds placing in work inside.
“We definitely have worked on our defense and poise,” Amendala stated. “Defense brings the energy, and we still missed layups throughout the whole game, but getting stops on defense was huge.”
In Hudson’s Bay, Tumwater could have its fingers full in a very new method, with the Eagles trying to push the tempo and play small after a 33-30 defensive-minded win over W.F. West of their semifinal contest.
“They have a good point guard,” Johnson stated. “We’ll have to come up with a gameplan, and hopefully we can get into an offense a little bit more than we were able to here.”
